Notes on Kuhn, Chapter 13
- “To a very great extent the term ‘science’ is reserved for fields that do progress in obvious ways.” (p. 160)
Important Question—Why is progress such a “noteworthy”
characteristic of the scientific enterprise?
– According to Kuhn, the answer depends on what sort of
science—normal, extraordinary, etc.—we have in mind.
Progress in periods of normal science—
- “Normally, the members of a mature scientific community work from a single paradigm or from a closely related set.” (p. 162)
- Viewed from within a scientific community, “the result of successful creative work is progress.” (p. 162)
- In periods of normal science, during which there is general agreement on “first principles,” scientists are free to “concentrate exclusively on the subtlest and most esoteric of the phenomena that concern it.” This increases “both the effectiveness and efficiency with which the group as a whole solves new problems.” (pp. 163-164)
- Because scientists are “relatively” insulated from the demands of non-scientists and of “everyday life,” they can dispose of problems quickly and can choose problems that they have good reason to believe that they can solve. (p.164)
- During periods of normal science, when scientific communities have confidence in their paradigms, students of science learn from textbooks that recapitulate the classic works of science in relatively brief, precise, and systematic form. (p. 165)
Progress in scientific revolutions—
- Because scientific revolutions “close with a total victory for one of the two opposing camps,” it is natural for the victors to see the results of their victory as progress. (pp. 166-167)
- When a scientific community repudiates a past paradigm, it “renounces, as a fit subject for professional scrutiny,” most of the literature that embodied that paradigm. This distorts scientists’ perceptions of the histories of their disciplines in ways that lead them to see those histories as consisting of progress toward the current states of those disciplines. (p. 167)
- The “authority” to choose between paradigms is vested in the members of the scientific community. The requirements for membership in that community ensure that the community maintains that authority exclusively. (pp. 167-168)
Important Question—What sort of progress is it that is
“characteristic” of the scientific enterprise?
- “We may . . . have to relinquish the notion that . . . changes of paradigm carry scientists and those who learn from them closer and closer to the truth.” (p. 170)
- The process of change in science is evolutionary and may perhaps be understood without assuming “that there is some one full, objective, true account of nature and that the proper measure of scientific achievement is the extent to which it brings us closer to that ultimate goal.” (pp. 171-173)
- “Any conception of nature compatible with the growth of science by proof is compatible with the evolutionary view of science. . . .” (p. 173)