Kuhn Study Guide I: Chapters 1, 2, 3

The following notes are mostly in the same order as the exposition in the book.
Terms in italics are important and may in some cases be unfamiliar to you. If you can’t figure out what they mean from the context, look them up.
Some figures or sections are rather technical and are not essential for our class, so I’ll designate them as skim. Other parts are important to understand and I’ll label them as note. Some questions are not central but intriguing (to me at least), so I’ll call them just for fun.

  1. All through these chapters Kuhn contrasts cosmology and astronomy. Roughly, what is the distinction he is making?
  2. The Figure 1 diagrams show shadows at various times of the day and year. Make sure you know where the sun would be positioned at dawn, noon, and dusk in each diagram.
  3. Figure 2 shows three sunrise shadows, one black, one white, and one striped. Just for fun which shadow corresponds to the winter solstice?
  4. Skim pp. 15-16. Note Figure 6.
  5. Skim pp. 20-23. Note toll collector analogy on p. 24. Distinguish diurnal and annual motions.
  6. Note Figure 10. It helps to explain why there were no serious proponents of a flat earth in this case. Skim the section on the Sun (pp. 33-35) and Figure 14, but note the section on Conceptual Schemes (pp. 35-41).
  7. Briefly describe the two-sphere conception of the universe and the contrasting views of the atomists, Pythagoreans, Heraclides, and Aristarchus.
  8. Note Vitruvius analogy on p. 52 and also Figure 16. Skim the section on Homocentric Spheres (pp. 55-59) and most of the sections on Epicycles and Ptolemaic Astronomy (pp.59-71) with the following two exceptions: Note both Figure 19, which we’ll explain in class, and the discussion of Ptolemy’s Almagest, which begins at the bottom of p. 71 and continues on p. 72.
  9. Note that on p. 84 Aristotle gives two different kinds of argument for his spherical model of the terrestrial domain. He begins with what we might call philosophical considerations and then switches to observations. Very briefly summarize each group of arguments.
  10. Summarize Ptolemy’s arguments on p. 85 against Heraclides’ theory.
  11. Just for fun show how the nature-abhors-a-vacuum theory could explain the operation of a siphon.
  12. Summarize briefly Aristotle’s theory of the natural motions of the terrestrial elements, Earth, Air, Fire and Water, and the celestial element Aether, sometimes called the quintessence.
  13. Throughout these three chapters Kuhn describes how Greek astronomy was related to ideas in a wide variety of other fields; as a consequence when Copernicus introduced a new astronomical model it had a revolutionary impact. Briefly summarize the connections between two-sphere astronomy and other belief systems in both science and the humanities.