Scientific Revolutions

Philosophy ◽  
2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Nickles
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Practice ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Scientific Change ◽  
Scientific Development ◽  
Scientific Revolutions ◽  
Structure Of Scientific Revolutions ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Scientific Decision

Scientific revolutions and the problem of understanding deep scientific change became central topics in philosophy of science with Thomas S. Kuhn’s publication in 1962 of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (see Kuhn 1970, cited under General Overviews). Kuhn attacked the received view of the logical empiricists and Popperians that scientific change is cumulative. He claimed that there have been several revolutions since the so-called scientific revolution, including dramatic overturnings in the most mature sciences—with more to be expected in the future. Kuhn’s more dynamic model of scientific development postulated the existence of occasional crises that sometimes trigger full-scale revolutions that overthrow the old “paradigm” and replace it with a new one discontinuous or “incommensurable” with the old one. He rejected the received views of scientific rationality and denied that even the most successful sciences are progressing toward a final, representational truth about the world. By focusing on finished, “textbook” science, defenders of the received view, he argued, presented an inadequate account of how scientific research is done, leaving unexplained the marked difference between the mature natural sciences and the social sciences as well as the difference within a mature science itself between “normal science” and the extraordinary research context of science in crisis. Kuhn and an entire generation of historically oriented philosophers of science believed that philosophical models of science should be more naturalistic (not based on a priori normative claims), more reflective of scientific practice, and thus testable against the history of science. Unlike the logicians of science, Kuhn highlighted cognitive and social psychological factors and the importance of rhetoric in scientific decision making. In reaction, critics questioned whether there have been any genuinely Kuhnian revolutions, accusing Kuhn of debunking modern science by portraying science as subjective, irrational, and relativistic. Kuhn replied that he was not a relativist, that he was attempting to develop a new account of scientific cognition and rationality, and that he was in effect trying to instigate a revolution of his own at the level of metascience and even general epistemology. Virtually no expert fully accepts Kuhn’s model of science, but there is general agreement that he posed some serious problems, including the problem of new theories: How can it be rational for scientists to reject a highly developed and accomplished theory or research program in favor of a radical and undeveloped new approach? Kuhn’s work stimulated a number of later developments in philosophy and in social studies of science more generally.

RISE, GRUBENHUND: ON PROVINCIALIZING KUHN

2012 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-126 ◽  
Author(s):  
DEBORAH R. COEN
Keyword(s):  
History Of Science ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Foreign Languages ◽  
Ludwik Fleck ◽  
Scientific Revolutions ◽  
Visual Metaphors ◽  
Structure Of Scientific Revolutions ◽  
History Of ◽  
Kuhnian Revolution ◽  
Neutral Ground

Bilingualism was Kuhn's solution to the problem of relativism, the problem raised by his own theory of incommensurability. In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, he argued that scientific theories are separated by gulfs of mutual incomprehension. There is no neutral ground from which to judge one theory fitter than another. Each is formulated in its own language and cannot be translated into the idiom of another. Yet, like many Americans, Kuhn never had the experience of moving comfortably between languages. “I've never been any good really at foreign languages,” he admitted in an interview soon before his death. “I can read French, I can read German, if I'm dropped into one of those countries I can stammer along for a while, but my command of foreign languages is not good, and never has been, which makes it somewhat ironic that much of my thought these days goes to language.” Kuhn may have been confessing to more than a personal weakness. His linguistic ineptitude seems to be a clue to his overweening emphasis on the difficulty of “transworld travel.” Multilingualism remained for him an abstraction. In this respect, I will argue, Kuhn engendered a peculiarly American turn in the history of science. Kuhn's argument for the dependence of science on the norms of particular communities has been central to the development of studies of science in and as culture since the 1980s. Recent work on the mutual construction of science and nationalism, for instance, is undeniably in Kuhn's debt. Nonetheless, the Kuhnian revolution cut off other avenues of research. In this essay, I draw on the counterexample of the physician–historian Ludwik Fleck, as well as on critiques by Steve Fuller and Ted Porter, to suggest one way to situate Kuhn within the broader history of the history of science. To echo Kuhn's own visual metaphors, one of the profound effects of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions on the field of history of science was to render certain modes of knowledge production virtually invisible.

Combining Kuhn and Jung: outlining a ‘step ladder model’ (SLM) for scientific discovery and paradigm shift research

2015 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 206-226
Author(s):  
Sam Keenan
Keyword(s):  
History Of Science ◽  
Paradigm Shift ◽  
Scientific Discovery ◽  
Jungian Psychology ◽  
Discovery Process ◽  
Scientific Revolutions ◽  
Ladder Model ◽  
Structure Of Scientific Revolutions ◽  
12 Steps ◽  
History Of

This paper provides the outline of a ‘step ladder model’ (SLM) comprising 12 steps of scientific discovery making. It incorporates both a ‘leap-off point’ from Kuhn'sStructure of Scientific Revolutions, and ideas from Jungian psychology to reveal patterns in the way in which scientific discoveries are made, across 40 examples from the history of science. The current consensus is that these discoveries are accidental. This paper aims to provide a model for deliberately making dream-based scientific discoveries. The key to this model is intrapsychic patterns in how discoveries of this kind can be made. As these patterns become gradually clearer, greater understanding of the dream-based scientific discovery-making process can develop. Gradually as a collective endeavour, as the SLM develops, the dream-based scientific discovery process can by degrees become less accidental, and progressively more deliberate.

André Bazin's Film Theory

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angela Dalle Vacche
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
Film Theory ◽  
Religious Practice ◽  
Science And Religion ◽  
The Other ◽  
Ethical Awareness ◽  
Classical Geometry ◽  
Static Object ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Difference

The best way to understand Bazin’s film theory is to pay attention to art, science, and religion, since spectatorship depends on perception, cognition, and hallucination. By arguing that this dissident Catholic’s worldview is anti-anthropocentric, Angela Dalle Vacche concludes that cinema recapitulates the history of evolution and technology inside our consciousness, so that we may better understand how we overlap with, but also differ from, animals, plants, objects, and machines. Whereas in “Art,” the author explains the difference between painting as a static object and the moving image as an event unfolding in time, in “Science,” she discusses Bazin’s dislike of classical geometry and Platonic algebra, his fascination with biology and modern calculus to underline his holistic Darwinism, and his anti-Euclidean mathematics of motion and contingency. Comparable to a religious practice, Bazin’s cinema is the only collective ritual of the twentieth century capable of fostering an emotional community by calling on critical self-interrogation and ethical awareness. Especially keen on Italian neorealism, Bazin argues that this sensibility thrives on beings and things displacing themselves in such a way as to turn the Other into a Neighbor. Bazin’s film theory acknowledges the equalizing impact of the camera lens, which is analogous to, but also different from, the human eye. In the cinema, two different kinds of eyes coexist: one is mechanical and objective, the other is human and subjective. By refusing to reshape the world according to an a priori thesis, Bazin’s idea of an anti-anthropocentric cinema seeks surprise, dialogue, risk, and experiment.

scholarly journals Kuhn and Wittgenstein: The Paradigm Priority Problem, Relativism and Incommensurability

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Wagner Oliveira
Keyword(s):  
Point Of View ◽  
Theory Of Science ◽  
Traditional Conception ◽  
Linguistic Turn ◽  
On Certainty ◽  
Scientific Revolutions ◽  
Structure Of Scientific Revolutions ◽  
Social Nature ◽  
Conceptual Changes ◽  
History Of

For dropping the incommensurability idea elaborated at the time of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Kuhn dismisses the concept of “revolution”. The incommensurability involved the incomparability of theories. In this new environment, the revolution is replaced by conceptual reformulation and the incommensurability becomes occasional. The linguistic turn in Kuhn’s thought involves conceptual changes whose aim is to get around the accusation of relativism that the former notion of incommensurability arouses. The most fundamental effect of these conceptual reformulations is the commitment to a traditional conception of semantics. It changes the comprehension of the historical and social nature of the foundations of the changes that scientific knowledge goes through. The comparison between the answer to the problem of paradigm priority attributed by Kuhn to Wittgenstein and Wittgenstein by himself shows that the basis of the normative nature of paradigm commitment is an essentialist concern. In the second half of this paper, I will evaluate Kuhn’s manner of getting around the problems of incommensurability in contrast to Wittgenstein’s view of philosophy dealing with similar issues in On Certainty. This enables one to essay answers to the problems of incommensurability without relativism or any commitment to a traditional conception of semantics. These contrasts show how far Kuhn’s new theory of science departs from the Wittgensteinian inspiration and abandons the point of view of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. The development of these two halves makes it possible to indicate reasons to believe that questions concerning the theory and history of science can benefit largely from a grammatical exploration, which gives rise to a theory of science inspired by Wittgenstein’s thought, as Mauro Condé suggests.

The Imaginary Lyellian Revolution

1988 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 126-133 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alberto Elena
Keyword(s):  
Detailed Analysis ◽  
Scientific Revolution ◽  
Scientific Change ◽  
Historical Evidence ◽  
Scientific Revolutions ◽  
Structure Of Scientific Revolutions

Historians and philosophers of science have usually followed Kuhn in his appraisal of Lyell's contribution to geology as a major scientific revolution. Nevertheless a detailed analysis of the historical evidence rather support a different view: Lyell's work did not establish any paradigm to be unanimously accepted by his colleagues. Thus Kuhn's model of scientific change does not authorize us to speak of a Lyellian revolution in geology. On the contrary such an interpretation is a recent historiographic myth, originated with Gillispie's Genesis and Geology and promptly prevailing as a result of Kuhn's highly influential The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

The patient’s voice in the emerging era of participatory medicine

2018 ◽  
Vol 53 (5-6) ◽  
pp. 350-360 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dave deBronkart
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Change ◽  
New Paradigm ◽  
Structure Of Scientific Revolutions ◽  
Clinical Relationship ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Sciences ◽  
Traditional Paradigm ◽  
Patient Stories ◽  
Participatory Medicine

Professionalism in any field requires keeping pace with change, and nowhere is it more true than medicine. Knowledge flow has changed dramatically since today’s accreditation standards were developed, and change continues more rapidly than ever. It’s time for a fresh look at how best to achieve care in this altered environment, where valid knowledge may come from the patient as well as from clinician resources: a sociological change driven by technological change. The power structure of the clinical relationship is inevitably altered as constraints on patient knowledge are loosened by the internet, apps, and devices, undermining a paradigm of patients as uninformed recipients of care based on a one-way flow of wisdom from providers. Case after case is presented showing that patients today have generated undeniable value, violating the expectations and assumed best practices of the old model. To understand this sociological (yet scientific) change, this article reviews the role of paradigms in the history of sciences as described in Thomas Kuhn’s landmark book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions and describes how these anomalous patient stories force the conclusion that the traditional paradigm of patients is no longer supportable and a new paradigm is needed. This in turn means our standards of professionalism and appropriate care must be updated, lest we fail to achieve best possible care in our increasingly overburdened system. Our new standard must be to teach clinicians to recognize, welcome, and work with empowered “e-patients” in the new model of participatory medicine.

scholarly journals Individuals, Communities, and Groups in Thomas Kuhn’s Model of Scientific Development

2021 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Paulo Pirozelli
Keyword(s):  
Methodological Problem ◽  
Scientific Development ◽  
Thomas Kuhn ◽  
Scientific Revolutions ◽  
Structure Of Scientific Revolutions ◽  
Scientific Controversies ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Fundamental Units ◽  
Scientific Debates ◽  
Apparent Conflict

In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn resorts to concepts from several disciplines in order to describe the general patterns of scientific development. This blend of disciplines can be explained in part by Kuhn's intellectual path, from physics to history and then to philosophy of science; but it also points to a deeper methodological problem, which is the question of what is the real unity of analysis in his model of science. The primary intention of this article is, thus, to give a solution to this difficulty. The answer, I believe, rests on identifying three fundamental units present in Kuhn's theory of scientific development. They are, respectively, the individual, responsible for producing evidence, spreading information, and choosing theories; the community, a set of scientists investigating a series of phenomena; and the groups, individuals with similar behavior but with looser institutional or social ties — a usually neglected category in Kuhnian literature, but equally fundamental for the final outcome of scientific debates. After investigating these categories in detail, I propose a way of integrating them into a general model for explaining the resolution of scientific controversies. Finally, I try to resolve the apparent conflict among disciplinary vocabularies by offering an account of the function of sociological, psychological, and epistemological concepts for describing controversies, and some of the methodologies appropriate for each of these tasks.

scholarly journals Critical Concepts of the State and their Significance for Russian Jurisprudence: Introduction to the Problem

Lex Russica ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 73 (6) ◽  
pp. 122-138
Author(s):  
B. V. Nazmutdinov
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Social Institution ◽  
The State ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Social Construct ◽  
Critical Approaches ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Political Associations

The state is for the most part a key political concept in the minds of lawyers. It is often "devoid" of history: they use the same term to name ancient and modern political associations (Polis, Republic, Empire, national state), without noticing the fundamental difference between them. The paper emphasizes the difference between "universalist" and "critical" approaches to the state. The former seeks to see the birth of the state in the second Millennium BC, trying to link the emergence of law with the emergence of the state. The latter emphasizes the historical contextuality of the emergence of the state — a unique social institution that appeared in Europe during the early Modern period. The state is a modern (modern) social construct, and its reality is determined not only by the presence of a certain idea in the minds of people, but also by stable, typified social practices. In the modern world, law is mediated by the state, and in many cases, it is monopolized by it. In this perspective, the history of the state is often inseparable from the history of law, and the theory of law from the theory of the state. The author of the paper adheres to the second approach and agrees that law is a phenomenon whose existence has not been determined by the state for a long time.The author presumes that for many reasons, the state continues to be a priori political category in the minds of lawyers who observe daily manifestations of power mechanisms. To denounce this "naturalness" of the state, critical approaches to the concept and origin of the state are necessary. The paper presents various critical concepts of the state: from radical political evolutionism to critical conceptual history.

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