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Kuhn and His Critics on Normal and Revolutionary Science
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 April 2024
Extract
There is ample evidence that Professor Thomas S. Kuhn's concept of scientific paradigms has been accepted as an important, original, and permanent contribution to the discussion and writing on the logic of scientific change, but nevertheless there is something unsatisfactory about it for philosophers in particular.
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- Copyright © 1991 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)
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Notes
1. The basic relevant work of Professor Kuhn is The Structure of Sci entific Revolutions in the revised and enlarged edition (Chicago: Chi cago University Press, 1970). The best collection of pertinent critical philosophical papers is Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge, ed. I. Lakatos and A. Musgrave (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), hereafter CGK.
2. Notice the following comparisons of Kuhn with Karl Popper on Science: "It is because Kuhn - at last - has noticed this central fact about all real science …, namely that it is normally a habit-governed, puzzle-solving activity, not a fundamentally upheaving or falsifying activity (not, in other words, a philosophical activity), that actual scientists are now increasingly reading Kuhn instead of Popper: to such an extent, indeed, that … ‘paradigm' and not ‘hypothesis' is now the ‘O.K. word"' (Margaret Masterman, "The Nature of a Paradigm," in CGK, p. 60). "Belief may be a regrettably unavoidable biological weakness to be kept under the control of criticism: but commitment is for Popper an outright crime" (Imre Lakatos, "Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes," CGK, p. 92). Also, on the tabula rasa see Lakatos, CGK, p. 99, and on the rigidity of conceptual frameworks (paradigms) according to H. Poincaré, see Lakatos, CGK, p. 105.
3. For example, John Watkins, in "Against ‘Normal Science"' CGK, p. 27, proposes to rebut "Kuhn's view of scientific normalcy as a so ciety of closed minds."
4. "I remember suggesting to him (Kuhn) in 1961 that he should bring out and discuss in his book the clash between his view of the scien tific community as an essentially closed society … and Popper's view that the scientific community ought to be, and to a consid erable degree is, an open society in which no theory, however domi nant and successful, no ‘paradigm,' to use Kuhn's term, is ever sacred" (John Watkins, CGK, p. 26). And, again, in CGK, p. 28: "Thus we have the following: the condition which Kuhn regards as the normal and proper condition of science is a condition which, if it actually obtained, Popper would regard as unscientific … Popper has suggested that the motto of science should be: Revolution In Permanence! For Kuhn, it seems, a more appropriate maxim would be: Not nostrums but normalcy!" Finally, see Paul Feyerabend, "Con solations For The Specialist," CGK, pp. 199-200; and Karl Popper, "Normal Science and Its Danger," CGK, pp. 52-53.
5. J. Watkins, CGK, pp. 34-35; I. Lakatos, CGK, p. 178; S. Toulmin, "Distinction Between Normal and Revolutionary Science," CGK, p. 43.
6. I. Lakatos, CGK, p. 178.
7. J. Watkins, CGK, pp. 27, 31; K. Popper, CGK, pp. 52-53.
8. J. Watkins, CGK, p. 27; P. Feyerabend, CGK, p. 209.
9. P. Feyerabend, CGK, pp. 198-202.
10. M. Masterman, CGK, pp. 61, 67.
11. Cf. J. LaLumia, "Saving The Phenomena And Scientific Change," Diogenes 83 (1973): 128-130.
12. Cf. E. Meyerson, "De l'analyse des produits de la pensee," Essais, p. 103; also, Du cheminement de la pensée, p. 714.