These Extracts from ‘'The Structure of Scientific Revolutions'. By Thomas Kuhn, Scientist and philosopher reveal the essentially political nature of the process by which a new paradigm challenges the dominant paradigm in any field of science. Kuhn depicts how supporters and opponents of a new paradigm conduct a campaign, the success of which is measured by the number of supporters the new entrant can win away from the incumbent.
The function of a paradigm
"A paradigm is a universally recognised achievement that for a time provides model problems and solutions to a community of practitioners.”
"A paradigm is what the members of a scientific community share, and, conversely, a scientific community consists of men and women who share a paradigm,"
"A scientific community consists of the practitioners of a scientific speciality. To an extent unparalleled in most other fields, they have undergone similar educations and professional initiations; in the process they have absorbed the same technical literature and drawn many of the same lessons from it... The members of a scientific community see themselves and are seen by others as the men and women uniquely responsible for the pursuit of a set of shared goals, including the training of their successors. Within such groups communication is relatively full and professional judgements relatively unanimous."
"The study of paradigms... is what mainly prepares the student for membership in the particular scientific community with which he will later practice. Because he there joins men and women who learned the bases of their field from the same concrete models, his subsequent practice will seldom evoke overt disagreement over fundamentals. Men and women whose research is based on shared paradigms are committed to the same rules and standards for scientific practice. That commitment and the apparent consensus it produces are the prerequisites for normal science, ie. for the genesis and continuation of a particular research tradition."
Seeing the same thing differently
‘No part of the aim of normal science is to call forth new sorts of phenomena; indeed those that will not fit the box are often not seen at all.'
“Paradigm changes do cause scientists to see the world of their research engagement differently.”
‘a switch in visual gestalt’
“Practicing in two different worlds, the two groups of scientists see different things when they look from the same point in the same direction… That is why a law that cannot be demonstrated to one group of scientists may occasionally seem intuitively obvious to another.”
“Equally, it is why, before they can hope to communicate fully, one group or the other must experience the conversion that we have been calling a paradigm shift.”
Hearing the same thing differently
“The proponents of competing paradigms are always at least slightly across purposes. Neither side will grant all the non-empirical assumptions that the other needs in order to make its case…. They are bound to talk through each other. Though each may hope to convert the other to his way of seeing his science abd its problems, neither may hope to prove his case.”
‘”… the proponents of competing paradigms must fail to make complete contact with each other’s viewpoints.”
“Scientists debating the choice between successive theories… the vocabularies with which they discuss such situations consist predominatly of the same terms… they must be attaching some of those terms to nature differently and their communication is inevitably only partial.”
Defining science differently
‘”… the proponents of competing paradigms will often disagree about the list of problems that any candidate for paradigm must resolve. Their standards or their definitions of science are not the same.”
An argument between reasonable men and women
“If a paradigm is ever to triumph it must gain some first supporters, those who will develop it to the point where hardheaded arguments can be produced and multiplied… Becauscientists are reasonable people, one or another argument will ultimately persuade many of them. But there is no single argument can or should persuade them all. Rather than a single group conversion, what occurs is an increasing shift in the distribution of professional allegiances.”
“At the start a new candidate for paradigm may have few supporters, and on occasions the supporters’ motives may be suspect.”
“If the paradigm is one destined to win its fight, the number and strength of the persuasive arguments in its favour will increase…. Gradually the number of experiments, instruments, articles, and books based on the paradigm will multiply…”
“Nature itself must first undermine professional security by making prior achievements seem problematic… Even when that has occurred and a new candidate for paradigm has been evoked, scientists will be reluctant to embrace it unless convinced that two all-important conditions are being met. First, the new candidate must seem to resolve some outstanding and generally recognised problem that can be met in no other way. Second, the new paradigm must promise to preserve a large part of the concrete problem-solving ability that has accrued to science through its predecessors.”
No comments:
Post a Comment