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KUHN AND PHILOSOPHY*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 March 2012

MICHAEL FRIEDMAN
MICHAEL FRIEDMAN*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, Stanford University E-mail: mlfriedman@stanford.edu
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Extract

Initially trained as a physicist, Kuhn became a leading and extraordinarily influential figure in the history of science. He saw his work in the history of science as contributing to a novel philosophical conception of the nature of science. At the outset of Structure, for example, Kuhn announces his intention to replace the “development-by-accumulation” model he associates with the philosophical tradition before him—including, in particular, what he calls “early logical positivism”—with a new model of radical conceptual discontinuity or incommensurability. Structure was written during Kuhn's tenure teaching philosophy and history of science at Berkeley, and, shortly after its publication, he took up a new post as professor of philosophy and history of science at Princeton. From 1983 until his death in 1996 Kuhn was professor of philosophy at MIT, where he attempted further to articulate his conception of incommensurability, taking account of developments in linguistics and philosophy of language.

Type
Forum: Kuhn's Structure at Fifty
Information
Modern Intellectual History , Volume 9 , Issue 1 , April 2012 , pp. 77 - 88
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

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References

1 Kuhn, Thomas, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago, 1970)Google Scholar begins by rejecting this model in chapter 1, although Kuhn does not there explicitly associate it with logical positivism. In chapter 9 of Structure, 98, however, he rejects the view, “closely associated with early logical positivism,” that “would restrict the range and meaning of an accepted theory so that it could not possibly conflict with any later theory that made predictions about some of the same natural phenomena.” Kuhn there opposes this view, and argues for incommensurability, using the example of Einsteinian relativity theory.

2 See e.g. Schapere, Dudley John, “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions”, Philosophical Review 73 (1964), 383–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Scheffler, Israel, Science and Subjectivity (Indianapolis, 1967)Google Scholar.

3 See e.g. Giere, Ronald N., Explaining Science (Chicago, 1988), 32CrossRefGoogle Scholar: “Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions . . . was a major contributor to the decline of logical empiricism beginning in the 1960s.” A similar view is found in the Introduction to Suppe, Frederick, The Structure of Scientific Theories (Urbana, IL, 1977)Google Scholar, where logical empiricism is characterized as the “Received View” to which more recent views—including Kuhn's—are opposed. See also Rorty, Richard, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton, NJ, 1979), 59, 332–3Google Scholar.

4 See e.g. Friedman, Michael, Reconsidering Logical Positivism (Cambridge, 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, together with the secondary literature cited there.

5 Kuhn, Thomas, The Road since Structure (Chicago, 2000), 264Google Scholar.

6 Reisch, George, “Did Kuhn Kill Logical Empiricism?”, Philosophy of Science, 58 (1991), 264–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Ibid., 266–7.

8 This philosophy of linguistic frameworks, including the sharp distinction between internal and external questions, is formulated most explicitly in Carnap, Rudolf, “Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology”, Revue internationale de philosophie 11 (1950), 20–40Google Scholar. The basic ideas go back to idem, The Logical Syntax of Language (London, 1937; original published in 1934).

9 For discussion and references see Reisch, “Kuhn”, 270–74. These affinities between Carnap and Kuhn are discussed by several authors in addition to Reisch, including Earman, John, “Carnap, Kuhn, and the Philosophy of Scientific Methodology”, in. Horwich, Paul, ed., World Changes: Thomas Kuhn and the Nature of Science (Cambridge, MA, 1993)Google Scholar, and Michael Friedman, “Remarks on the History of Science and the History of Philosophy”, in Horwich, World Changes.

10 Thomas Kuhn, “Afterwords”, in Horwich, World Changes, 313. Kuhn is responding to the last two papers cited in the previous footnote.

11 Kuhn, “Afterwords”, 314, original emphasis.

12 See Carnap, Logical Syntax, §72: “Wissenschaftslogik takes the place of the inextricable tangle of problems that is known as philosophy.” Original emphasis.

13 Carnap, Rudolf, Der Raum (Berlin, 1922)Google Scholar.

14 Cassirer, Ernst, Zur Einsteinschen Relativitätstheorie (Berlin, 1921)Google Scholar.

15 Reichenbach, Hans, Relativitätstheorie und Erkenntnis Apriori (Berlin, 1920)CrossRefGoogle Scholar refers (in advance) to Cassirer, Zur Einsteinschen Relativitätstheorie, in a note. Similarly, Cassirer acknowledges Reichenbach's work in a note added in proof to his book. Further discussion of Carnap and Reichenbach in this connection can be found in Friedman, Logical Positivism.

16 Reichenbach, Zur Einsteinschen Relativitätstheorie, chap. 5.

17 Carnap, Rudolf, Der logische Aufbau der Welt (Berlin, 1928)Google Scholar.

18 For further discussion of Cassirer and the Marburg school see Friedman, Michael, A Parting of the Ways: Carnap, Cassirer, and Heidegger (Chicago, 2000)Google Scholar.

19 Carnap, Aufbau, §75. Carnap cites Cassirer, Ernst, Substance and Function (Chicago, 1923; originally published in 1910)Google Scholar.

20 Whitehead, Afred North and Russell, Bertrand, Principia Mathematica (Cambridge, 1910–13), 3 volsGoogle Scholar.

21 Carnap, Aufbau, §179. Carnap (ibid.) also explains the corresponding divergence with the Marburg school: “According to the conception of the Marburg School . . . the object is the eternal X, its determination is an incompletable task. In opposition to this it is to be noted that finitely many determinations suffice for the constitution of the object—and thus for its univocal description among the objects in general. Once such a description is set up the object is no longer an X, but rather something univocally determined—whose complete description then certainly still remains an incompletable task.”

22 As I indicated above, Carnap's mature standpoint adopts Wissenschaftslogik as the substitute for all forms of traditional epistemology, including the epistemology of the Aufbau. For further discussion of this point see Richardson, Alan W., “From Epistemology to the Logic of Science”, in Giere, Ronald N. and Richardson, Alan W., eds., Origins of Logical Empiricism (Minneapolis, 1996)Google Scholar.

23 Kuhn, “Afterwords,” 331. Kuhn is responding to the last article cited in note 9 above.

24 Kuhn, Structure, v–vi.

25 Kuhn, Structure, 3. The passage concludes, “By implication, at least, these historical studies suggest the possibility of a new image of science. This essay aims to delineate that image by making explicit some of the new historiography's implications” (ibid.).

26 Koyré, Alexandre, Galileo Studies (Atlantic Highlands, NJ, 1978; originally published in 1939)Google Scholar. Kuhn, Structure, vi, also cites (among others) Meyerson, Emile, Identity and Reality (London, 1930; originally published in 1908)Google Scholar, to which I shall return below.

27 Kuhn, Thomas, The Essential Tension (Chicago, 1977), 107–8Google Scholar. In the same pages Kuhn cites the work of E. A. Burtt and A. Lovejoy and refers to “the modern historiography of science” founded by “E. J. Dijksterhuis, Anneliese Maier, and especially Alexandre Koyré.”

28 Kuhn, Thomas, Black Body Theory and the Quantum Discontinuity, 1894–1912 (Chicago, 1987), 361Google Scholar.

29 Cassirer, Ernst, Das Erkenntnisproblem in der Philosophie und Wissenschaft der neueren Zeit, 2 vols. (Berlin, 1906–7)Google Scholar.

30 Although he does acknowledge Cassirer's influence, Cohen, H. Floris, The Scientific Revolution (Chicago, 1994), 543Google Scholar, nonetheless contends that “only Burtt, Dijksterhuis, and Koyré were to elaborate such views [on the mathematization of nature] into detailed examinations of the birth of early modern science.” This contention is gainsaid by the text of Das Erkenntnisproblem itself, however, which treats Kepler, Galileo, Descartes, Bacon, and Newton (along with Copernicus, Bruno, Leonardo, Gilbert, Gassendi, Hobbes, Boyle, and Huygens) in quite considerable detail.

31 Meyerson, Identity and Reality, 388–9 (the quotation is from vol. 2 of Das Erkenntnisproblem).

32 Cassirer, Substance, 323–5. The passage continues, “But these [functional orders and coordinations (Ordnungen und Zuordungen)] do not exclude the moments of difference and change but only achieve determination in and with them. It is not manifoldness as such that is annulled [aufgehoben] but [we attain] only a manifold of another dimension: the mathematical manifold takes the place of the sensible manifold in scientific explanation. What thought requires is thus not the dissolution of diversity and change as such, but rather their mastery in virtue of the mathematical continuity of serial laws and serial forms” (ibid., original emphasis).

33 Koyré, Galileo, 223: “E. Cassirer, in his Erkenntnisproblem, vol. I, expresses the opinion that Galileo resurrected the Platonist ideal of scientific knowledge; from which follows, for Galileo (and Kepler), the necessity for mathematising nature . . . Unfortunately (at least in our opinion) Cassirer turns Plato into Kant. Thus, for him, Galileo's ‘Platonism’ is expressed by his giving priority to function and law over being and substance.”

34 Koyré, Alexandre, “Die Philosophie Emile Meyersons”, Deutsch–Französische Rundschau 4 (1931), 207–8Google Scholar.

35 Kuhn, Structure, 101–2.

36 See ibid., 206–7, which rejects all talk of convergence over time on the grounds that there is, “I think, no theory-independent way to reconstruct phrases like ‘really there’; the notion of a match between the ontology of a theory and its ‘real’ counterpart in nature now seems to me illusive in principle.” Kuhn continues (now speaking “as a historian”), “I do not doubt, for example, that Newton's mechanics improves on Aristotle's and that Einstein's improves on Newton's as instruments for puzzle-solving. But I can see in their succession no coherent direction of ontological development.”