|
 Philosopher
of the Month
February
2001 - Thomas
Kuhn
Frank
Pajares
Thomas
Samuel Kuhn was born on July 18, 1922, in Cincinnati, Ohio, United
States. He received a Ph. D. in physics from Harvard University
in 1949 and remained there as an assistant professor of general
education and history of science. In 1956, Kuhn accepted a post
at the University of California--Berkeley, where in 1961 he became
a full professor of history of science. In 1964, he was named M.
Taylor Pyne Professor of Philosophy and History of Science at Princeton
University. In 1979 he returned to Boston, this time to the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology as professor of philosophy and history of
science. In 1983 he was named Laurence S. Rockefeller Professor
of Philosophy at MIT.
Of
the five books and countless articles he published, Kuhn's most
renown work is The Structure of Scientific Revolutions,
which he wrote while a graduate student in theoretical physics at
Harvard. Initially published as a monograph in the International
Encyclopedia of Unified Science, it was published in book form by
the University of Chicago Press in 1962. It has sold some one million
copies in 16 languages and is required reading in courses dealing
with education, history, psychology, research, and, of course, history
and philosophy of science.
Throughout
thirteen succinct but thought-provoking chapters, Kuhn argued that
science is not a steady, cumulative acquisition of knowledge. Instead,
science is "a series of peaceful interludes punctuated by intellectually
violent revolutions," which he described as "the tradition-shattering
complements to the tradition-bound activity of normal science."
After such revolutions, "one conceptual world view is replaced
by another."
Although
critics chided him for his imprecise use of the term, Kuhn was responsible
for popularizing the term paradigm, which he described as essentially
a collection of beliefs shared by scientists, a set of agreements
about how problems are to be understood. According to Kuhn, paradigms
are essential to scientific inquiry, for "no natural history
can be interpreted in the absence of at least some implicit body
of intertwined theoretical and methodological belief that permits
selection, evaluation, and criticism." Indeed, a paradigm guides
the research efforts of scientific communities, and it is this criterion
that most clearly identifies a field as a science. A fundamental
theme of Kuhn's argument is that the typical developmental pattern
of a mature science is the successive transition from one paradigm
to another through a process of revolution. When a paradigm shift
takes place, "a scientist's world is qualitatively transformed
[and] quantitatively enriched by fundamental novelties of either
fact or theory."
Kuhn
also maintained that, contrary to popular conception, typical scientists
are not objective and independent thinkers. Rather, they are conservative
individuals who accept what they have been taught and apply their
knowledge to solving the problems that their theories dictate. Most
are, in essence, puzzle-solvers who aim to discover what they already
know in advance - "The man who is striving to solve a problem
defined by existing knowledge and technique is not just looking
around. He knows what he wants to achieve, and he designs his instruments
and directs his thoughts accordingly."
During
periods of normal science, the primary task of scientists is to
bring the accepted theory and fact into closer agreement. As a consequence,
scientists tend to ignore research findings that might threaten
the existing paradigm and trigger the development of a new and competing
paradigm. For example, Ptolemy popularized the notion that the sun
revolves around the earth, and this view was defended for centuries
even in the face of conflicting evidence. In the pursuit of science,
Kuhn observed, "novelty emerges only with difficulty, manifested
by resistance, against a background provided by expectation."
And
yet, young scientists who are not so deeply indoctrinated into accepted
theories - a Newton, Lavoisier, or Einstein - can manage to sweep
an old paradigm away. Such scientific revolutions come only after
long periods of tradition-bound normal science, for "frameworks
must be lived with and explored before they can be broken."
However, crisis is always implicit in research because every problem
that normal science sees as a puzzle can be seen, from another perspective,
as a counterinstance and thus as a source of crisis. This is the
"essential tension" in scientific research.
Crises
are triggered when scientists acknowledge the discovered counterinstance
as an anomaly in fit between the existing theory and nature. All
crises are resolved in one of three ways. Normal science can prove
capable of handing the crisis-provoking problem, in which case all
returns to "normal." Alternatively, the problem resists
and is labeled, but it is perceived as resulting from the field's
failure to possess the necessary tools with which to solve it, and
so scientists set it aside for a future generation with more developed
tools. In a few cases, a new candidate for paradigm emerges, and
a battle over its acceptance ensues - these are the paradigm wars.
Kuhn
argued that a scientific revolution is a noncumulative developmental
episode in which an older paradigm is replaced in whole or in part
by an incompatible new one. But the new paradigm cannot build on
the preceding one. Rather, it can only supplant it, for "the
normal-scientific tradition that emerges from a scientific revolution
is not only incompatible but actually incommensurable with that
which has gone before." Revolutions close with total victory
for one of the two opposing camps.
Kuhn
also took issue with Karl Popper's view of theory-testing through
falsification. According to Kuhn, it is the incompleteness and imperfection
of the existing data-theory fit that define the puzzles that characterize
normal science. If, as Popper suggested, failure to fit were grounds
for theory rejection, all theories would be rejected at all times.
In
the face of these arguments, how and why does science progress,
and what is the nature of its progress? Kuhn argued that normal
science progresses because members of a mature scientific community
work from a single paradigm or from a closely related set and because
different scientific communities seldom investigate the same problems.
The result of successful creative work addressing the problems posed
by the paradigm is progress. In fact, it is only during periods
of normal science that progress seems both obvious and assured.
Moreover, "the man who argues that philosophy has made no progress
emphasizes that there are still Aristotelians, not that Aristotelianism
has failed to progress."
As
to whether progress consists in science discovering ultimate truths,
Kuhn observed that "we may have to relinquish the notion, explicit
or implicit, that changes of paradigm carry scientists and those
who learn from them closer and closer to the truth." Instead,
the developmental process of science is one of evolution from primitive
beginnings through successive stages that are characterized by an
increasingly detailed and refined understanding of nature. Kuhn
argued that this is not a process of evolution toward anything,
and he questioned whether it really helps to imagine that there
is one, full, objective, true account of nature. He likened his
conception of the evolution of scientific ideas to Darwin's conception
of the evolution of organisms.
The
Kuhnian argument that a scientific community is defined by its allegiance
to a single paradigm has especially resonated throughout the multiparadigmatic
(or preparadigmatic) social sciences, whose community members are
often accused of paradigmatic physics envy. Kuhn suggested that
questions about whether a discipline is or is not a science can
be answered only when members of a scholarly community who doubt
their status achieve consensus about their past and present accomplishments.
Thomas
Kuhn was named a Guggenheim Fellow in 1954 and was awarded the George
Sarton Medal in the History of Science in 1982. He held honorary
degrees from institutions that included Columbia University and
the universities of Notre Dame, Chicago, Padua, and Athens. He suffered
from cancer during the last years of his life. Thomas Kuhn died
on Monday, June 17, 1996, at the age of 73 at his home in Cambridge,
Massachusetts. He was survived by his wife and three children.
A
new philosopher of the month will be featured from March 1st 2001
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