What’s Forgotten About The Structure of Scientific Revolutions?

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 323-339
Author(s):  
Jouni-Matti Kuukkanen
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Historical Record ◽  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
First Century ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
Scientific Revolutions ◽  
The Past ◽  
Structure Of Scientific Revolutions ◽  
History Of

Abstract Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is a classic, and it is certainly not forgotten. However, an essential aspect about it has been neglected. That is, Kuhn’s Structure is a book in philosophy of history in the sense that Structure attempts gives an account of historical events, focuses on the whole of the history of science and stipulates a structure of the history of science to explain historical events. Kuhn’s book and its contribution to the debates about the progress of science and the contingency and inevitability of the history of science shows why and how philosophy of history is relevant for the history and philosophy of science. Its successful integration of historical and philosophical aspects in one account makes it worthwhile reading also for philosophers of history in the twentieth-first century. In particular, it raises the question whether the historical record can justify philosophical views and comprehensive syntheses of the past.

scholarly journals History and Philosophy of Science: a Phylogenetic approach

2001 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 655-669 ◽  
Author(s):  
James G. Lennox
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Scientific Field ◽  
Scientific Revolutions ◽  
Structure Of Scientific Revolutions ◽  
Historical Investigation ◽  
History Of ◽  
Methodological Problems ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Insight Into

In the aftermath of Thomas Kuhn's The structure of scientific revolutions, there was a great deal of discussion about the relationship between the History of Science and the Philosophy of Science. A wider issue was at stake in these discussions: 'normativism' versus 'naturalism' in Epistemology. If the History of Science, at best, gives us reliable information about what actually occurred historically, how can it inform debates about such things as confirmation or explanation in Philosophy of Science? This essay makes a case for the centrality of historical investigation in the Philosophy of Science. I will defend what I term the 'Phylogenetic' approach to the Philosophy of Science. I will argue that since the foundations and dominant methods of a particular scientific field are shaped by its history, studying that History can give us considerable insight into conceptual and methodological problems in a particular Science. The case will be made both on general, philosophical grounds, and by compelling instantiation.

Political Science and the Post-Modern Critique of Scientism and Domination

1975 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 286-316 ◽  
Author(s):  
Herbert G. Reid ◽  
Ernest J. Yanarella
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Critical Reflection ◽  
Logical Positivism ◽  
Scientific Revolutions ◽  
Structure Of Scientific Revolutions ◽  
Political Inquiry ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Radical Reconstruction

It is by now a commonplace among American political scientists that the philosophical grounding of political inquiry is in dire need of critical reflection and serious repair, if not radical reconstruction. The sources of this widespread recognition are no doubt diverse, but not the least resides in the impact of the key ideas of Thomas Kuhn's celebrated work, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. For, although Kuhn's work was narrowly interpreted by Almond, Truman, and other key figures in the behavioral elite corps to conform to their image of science (basically a naive positivist image), the very breadth and subtlety of Kuhn's work, his commitment to formulating his conception of science from the history of science as practiced, and his ultimate antagonism to that tradition of the philosophy of science (logical positivism/empiricism) which behavioralists have embraced ensured that a lively and contentious debate would ensue.

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.

On Pierre Duhem

1987 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 363-370 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven J. Livesey
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Medieval Science ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
Pierre Duhem ◽  
First Time ◽  
Partial Translation

The publication of this volume appears to be the most recent in a group of works whose appearance marks renewed interest in Duhem. Over the past ten years, attention has been focused on Duhem's life (Jaki 1984), his physics (Jaki 1984; Nye 1986, 208–23), his philosophy of science (Jaki 1984, chap. 9; Paul 1979, chap. 5; Ariew 1984),' and his history of science (Jaki 1984, chap. 10; Martin 1976). But the significance of this translation is that - leaving asideTo Save the Phenomena– for the first time we have a partial translation into English of one of the two great historical works that revitalized the study of medieval science.

On How and Why Theology Changes

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark S. Massa
Keyword(s):  
History Of Science ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Paradigm Shift ◽  
Paradigm Change ◽  
Scientific Revolutions ◽  
Structure Of Scientific Revolutions ◽  
Essential Questions ◽  
History Of ◽  
Changes Over Time ◽  
Over Time

The Introduction provides an overview of the argument of the entire book. The author introduces the essential questions explored in the book concerning how theology changes over time. Also discussed is Thomas Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions, the work in the history of science that this book utilizes to understand changes in theology. The author draws on Kuhn’s term, “paradigm shift,” to explore ideas about theological paradigm change. The concepts of micro-traditions (specifically, natural law) and macro-traditions in theology are examined. This author explains that the book proceeds in an analogously historical fashion, moving from earlier paradigms of natural law to later ones.

The knowing world: A new global history of science

2019 ◽  
Vol 57 (3) ◽  
pp. 373-399 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Delbourgo
Keyword(s):  
History Of Science ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
The United States ◽  
First Century ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
Western World ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
In Transit

This article proposes a new global approach to the history of science centered on questions of geopolitics, historical consciousness, and cultural identity. Arguing that the field is now at a crossroads between its longstanding focus on the history of the natural sciences in the Western world, and the prospect of some form of worldwide history of science, the article describes a new undergraduate lecture course, designed by the author and taught at Rutgers and Harvard since 2015, which neither begins in Western Europe nor culminates with the United States. It aims to articulate an original vision for the field on this basis. Histories of science can and should offer deep histories of the global present, it is argued, by rethinking how historical narratives involve geographical decisions about where to focus analytical attention (and where not) and tackling narrative and geography together as linked issues. The approach proposed here is neither science in context nor knowledge in transit but engages the notion of a knowing world: one made up of multiple scientific cultures and long historical memory, and requiring dialectical movement back and forth across both space and time on a worldwide scale to grasp the scientific past’s importance for the present, as well as the present’s impact on how we perceive the past. Explicitly addressing polemics of identity, culture, race, and nationhood can help us to construct a more civic-minded and geopolitically informed history of science of use in the changing circumstances of the twenty-first century.

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