
Thomas Kuhn changed the way the world looked at science (2012) - jimsojim
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/aug/19/thomas-kuhn-structure-scientific-revolutions
======
captn3m0
I did a course recently on the Sociology of Science, and it covered a study of
Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions", Karl Popper's theory of
falsification, and Mertonian norms (aka Ethos of Science).

I found that to be a really good foundation for scientists, and highly
recommend these three to anyone in academia or science.

------
fecklessyouth
One less obvious area in which Kuhn has exerted tremendous influence, and one
not mentioned in this story, is on philosophy, and especially the history of
ethics. Alasdair MacIntyre's framing of moral thinking as "history-constituted
tradition" was sparked by Kuhn's similar framing of scientific thinking.
Except MacIntyre uses this approach to discredit the entirety of academic
moral philosophy, from Hume to Rawls. And, while doing so, exposes popular
ethical maxims as the arbitrary parodies of such work. He now advocates a
return to "Thomistic realism," initiated by Aristotle and developed by
Aquinas.

Here's one of his papers that outlines the application of Kuhn to philosophy:
[http://www.ifac.univ-
nantes.fr/IMG/pdf/Texte_de_Macintyre_19...](http://www.ifac.univ-
nantes.fr/IMG/pdf/Texte_de_Macintyre_1977_-_Intervention_de_Vincent_Boyer.pdf)

On a slightly different note:

>Kuhn, like Popper, thought that science was mainly about theory, but an
increasing amount of cutting-edge scientific research is data- rather than
theory-driven.

Science always proclaims to be "data driven." Galileo and the Ptolemaics were
working with the same "data." When Aristotle examined the bones of animals, he
was working with the same "data" as Darwin. What changes is how they interpret
it: what standards of truth and observation they observe in its collection and
synthesis. There is no such thing as "raw data."

~~~
robinsloan
Re: "There is no such thing as 'raw data'" \-- and of interest to Kuhnians
everywhere -- this is a terrific book about climate data, climate models, &
computation => [https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/vast-
machine](https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/vast-machine)

------
leephillips
Kuhn's really great book is _The Copernican Revolution_. He was a uniquely
insightful historian of science. It's amusing that he took some lessons from
the history of science, well known to scholars in that field, simplified and
distilled them to the point where even academic philosophers of science could
understand them, wrote a short book consisting largely of multiple repetitions
of these ideas, and it is _this_ book that made him a superstar among
undergraduates and philosophers. Well, good for him.

------
nerd_stuff
Am I the only one who read the article and thought the Whig interpretation was
more accurate? The "revolution" of quantum mechanics didn't overthrow
Newtonian mechanics, Relativity didn't either. They added to Newton's view and
corrected it in a few places but to this day the first thing you learn in
physics is Newton.

There was no revolution. Newton was right with the caveat that if things are
very large, very small, or very fast things may look different. To this day if
something disagrees with the core of what Newton said it's almost certainly
wrong. The fact that the "paradigm shift" from deterministic to probabilistic
left most of science untouched should show how paradigms aren't all that
important. Quantum mechanics has multiple "paradigms" describing the exact
same things and they're doing close to nothing in terms of pushing science
forward, some think they're holding it back because so much time is spent
arguing about them.

~~~
brudgers
Re-interpretation of Newton in light of quantum mechanics and relativity are
part and parcel of scientific revolution according to Kuhn. Science weaves a
narrative of progress. The extreme example, and the subject of Kuhn's earlier
work was the Copernican revolution: we still get the heliocentric model
presented as an astronomical refinement not a form of heresy. The standard
science narrative doesn't see Newton through his own eyes, as principally a
theologian, either: he spent a lot of effort trying to prove the existence of
god [so did Descartes despite _Discourse on Method_ ].

None of this is to downplay their intellectual contributions. It is only to
illustrate Kuhn's assertion that science constantly redefines past literature
as continuous with incompatible contemporary beliefs: any interpretation of
Newton's work orthogonally to the existence of god does not accurately depict
his views.

~~~
nerd_stuff
Newton's scientific ideas, which are what matter here, remain largely
untouched since they were published in the late 1600's. The fact that you'd
resort to bringing up how little science focuses on his beliefs in things like
numerology and alchemy doesn't bode well for the strength of Kuhn's work.

There's his scientific work which is widely available, and then there's his
personal beliefs. I could really care less if we don't talk about his
theology, but if you're accusing science of being dishonest about his
mathematical and scientific contributions that's a claim which requires better
evidence than you've provided.

~~~
brudgers
I am not anthropmorphizing science, let alone accusing it of anything.
Instead, I am explaining Kuhn's work [or at least my reading of it]. However
useful it may be to partition Newton's work into mechanics and cosmology, its
our partitioning, not Newton's. The "General Scholium" [1] was one of the
improvements Newton made to the first edition of _Principia_ in the two
decades between first and second editions. There are sociological reasons why
students of science are not encouraged to read Newton for themselves.

[1]:
[http://gravitee.tripod.com/genschol.htm](http://gravitee.tripod.com/genschol.htm)

~~~
nerd_stuff
The General Sholium[0] was an _addendum_ , not a set of corrections to The
Principia. And what book doesn't have some corrections between the first and
second edition?

> There are sociological reasons why students of science are not encouraged to
> read Newton for themselves.

Like what? Do you think physics teachers are afraid their students will find
out Newton believed in God and then they won't be atheists? Do you think
they're pushing materialism or "scientism" and rewriting history to that end?
This is close to a conspiracy theory. I think you're ascribing malice or ill
intent to what are almost purely pragmatic choices.

Here's the text of The Principia[1], read a few pages and imagine a physics
student trying to make sense of it. When I finally opened it I found exactly
what I had always been told I would find: something interesting but hard to
read and not the best place to learn physics. I don't think there are any
physics books today that prove the fundamentals of calculus in the middle of
their discussion of physics. That's a pedagogical nightmare. Today you learn
calculus and then you do physics with it, but Newton developed calculus to do
physics so there were no calculus books he could assume his audience was
already familiar with.

[0] -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Scholium](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Scholium)
[1] -
[http://www.archive.org/stream/newtonspmathema00newtrich/newt...](http://www.archive.org/stream/newtonspmathema00newtrich/newtonspmathema00newtrich_djvu.txt)

~~~
brudgers
Newton wrote _Principia_ in Latin, not English. Latin being, at the time, the
language of what Newton practised, natural philosophy and continuous with
theology. There was no such thing as science. Thus, it was perfectly normal
for Newton's thought to mature, and the _Scholium_ reflected the _progress_ of
his thinking over two decades.

Aside from having to add Latin to the scientific cannon alongside German and
English and Russian, the direction in which Newton's thinking evolved is
disruptive in the context of contemporary science's self image...none of which
is surprising given Kuhn's work.

~~~
nerd_stuff
Perhaps you should _learn_ something from Kuhn and consider that attachment to
your pet paradigm is holding you back.

When a scientist wants to build up the self-image of science they do the exact
opposite of what you're suggesting. They use Newton as an example to prove
that science is superior to the other disciplines he also practiced but bore
no fruit.

~~~
brudgers
The propensity of a not small portion of the professionally practising
population of scientists to postulate the most high profundity to their belief
system is a legacy of the discipline's origin among theologians and in the
traditionally sectarian institutions that are universities. The proof of
science's superiority is on as firm footing as proofs of god when it comes to
logical validity, e.g. the Newton that is pointed it to is not the Newton who
held the beliefs of _Principia_ 's author, as the _Schollium_ demonstrates.

Be fair to theology, for it admits when it's proofs resort to revelation.

------
DanielBMarkham
Kuhn's book can be argued to be one of the most important books of the last
100 years, because it shows the difference between how we _think_ we learn
things and how we actually learn them.

~~~
duaneb
Kuhn's book is mostly crap. He cherry picks his revolutions to argue his point
better. But the overall idea is solid, if not useful--in some ways it's just
Marxism applied to academics.

~~~
selimthegrim
Compared to Feyerabend Kuhn is 24K solid gold

------
westoncb
I found a copy of "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" sticking out of a
dumpster when I was in college, grabbed it, and read it.

It was surprisingly enjoyable, and surprisingly personally influential. I
ended up spending a lot of time thinking about what it was in the human brain
that caused this pattern of 'normal science' versus 'revolutionary science' to
be stable—and it was time well spent, I think.

------
OliverJones
Derrida and the other postmodern semioticists, theologians, and literary
critics can't hold a candle to Kuhn in the way they banished modernity. Each
of our personal "social locations" has a huge effect on how we think.

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kwhitefoot
He might have changed the way a few scientists and a few more philosophers
think about science but most people including most practising scientists don't
think about such things at all. The general public, I suspect, isn't even
aware that there is a 'way the world looked at science' much less that there
is a different way of looking at it.

I wouldn't have bothered writing this rant except that the sloppy use of words
like 'world' when all that can really be meant is something like 'the world of
science' or possibly 'the views of some academic observers of science' is one
of the defining characteristics of journalism (both high brow and mass
market). When one claims far more than is plausible one does a disservice to
the truth and misleads the interested lay person and when that person
discovers that the claim is untrue the reputations not only of the journalist
but also of the original work suffer.

~~~
jmcmichael
> He might have changed the way a few scientists and a few more philosophers
> think about science but most people including most practising scientists
> don't think about such things at all. The general public, I suspect, isn't
> even aware that there is a 'way the world looked at science' much less that
> there is a different way of looking at it.

There's a word for the state of these scientists and laypeople: ignorance.

Edit to add some substance to the name-calling:

There's a certain perspective held by many scientists that the scientific
method can and will describe the purposes and meaning behind every phenomena
both natural and man-made that have any relevance or importance to our lives
as humans. If those holding this perspective grant that valuable knowledge
lies outside the ability of science to observe and explain, they tend to view
it as irrelevant and frivolous. Those who hold this perspective tend to view
philosophy as mere wordplay, and the idea of studying science from the
perspective of philosophy (as Kuhn did) as pointless or an usurpation of their
position at the top of the intellectual ladder.

Feynman embodied this attitude when he said, "Philosophy of science is about
as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds."

It's a belligerent and proud ignorance that puts a black stain on the practice
of science today, and an attitude that threatens some of the most valuable
academic disciplines in the humanities, to the detriment of our culture.

My brief statement above was meant to call attention to this belligerent
ignorance and poke fun at it a little bit.

~~~
conistonwater
> _Feynman embodied this attitude when he said, "Philosophy of science is
> about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds."_

Your comment still does not explain how philosophy of science should be useful
to scientists. It would be much more convincing if it did.

~~~
mirimir
Self-awareness is always a good thing, no?

Kuhn's key point is that scientists (like many humans) tend to be herd
animals. When you get results that are inconsistent with the public record,
not to mention current dogma, there's a tendency to dig seriously for
systematic errors. And when you start getting results that are consistent with
the public record, you tend to get on with the writeup. Being aware of that
stereotypic behavior is the first step in being free of it. No?

~~~
jules
I agree, but doesn't this mean that scientists should read about the history
of science, or sociology of science, not philosophy of science?

~~~
mirimir
All of them!

And anyway, those are all artificial categories, I think.

------
mkempe
Kuhn's theory corresponds neither to the facts and nor to the history of
science. Galileo and Newton are ample counter-factuals.

------
Maro
I heard about Kuhn at school when I was doing my physics degree. His famous
work 'The structure of Scientific Revolutions' is worth the read:

[http://www.amazon.com/Structure-Scientific-
Revolutions-50th-...](http://www.amazon.com/Structure-Scientific-
Revolutions-50th-Anniversary/dp/0226458121/)

------
osullivj
Anyone who enjoys Kuhn's Structure should go on to read Paul Feyerabend's
Against Method, and Farewell to Reason. To summarise: there is only one rule
in science, and that is "anything goes!". There are interesting parallels
between scientific method and software methods...

~~~
leephillips
I found _Against Method_ to be intellectually dishonest. Feyerabend cherry
picks anecdotes from history, and distorts history, to support his pet idea
that there is no such thing as the scientific method or falsifiability.

~~~
foldr
Could you mention some specifics? In which respects was it intellectually
dishonest?

~~~
leephillips
I read this book in college (1970s), but the bit that sticks in my memory was
his discussion of observations through Galileo's telescope. His observation,
and others' confirmation, of Jupiter's moons, the phases of the planets, and
other phenomena helped end the Ptolemaic era, and had a profound effect on the
development of science. Feyerabend starts with the idea that "anything goes"
and tries to support it by describing some anecdotes of people who looked
through Galileo's telescope and said they couldn't see anything. He thinks
these anecdotes should be weighted equally with the body of detailed
astronomical observation, and thinks it was arbitrary to base scientific
models on observations of what, after all, were real things. He starts with
his conclusion and finds anecdotes to support it. I suspected at the time that
he wasn't even taking himself seriously, but plenty of other people seem to
have been.

~~~
foldr
You're missing the point of the discussion. The point is that observation is a
far less straightforward thing than it's sometimes made out to be. It is clear
_with hindsight_ that Galileo was indeed observing the moons of Jupiter, but
it was far from clear at the time. The reports of people who didn't see
anything are no more "anecdotal" than Galileo's reports that he did see
something, and there is little reason to doubt the veracity of either set of
reports. It is well known that there's a certain knack to seeing things
through telescopes and microscopes, and if you look through one for the first
time you may simply fail to see what a trained observer sees. Neither the
telescope nor human visual perception were well understood at the time, and it
must have been difficult to know what to make of the conflicting reports.
Feyerabend's entire argument depends on the assumption that Galileo was - at
least in retrospect - doing the right thing. However, the right thing in this
instance turned out to require the violation of pretty much every prescription
of the "scientific method".

~~~
leephillips
If that were the point, it's unlikely that I missed it, because it was a
commonplace before Feyerabend wrote his book, and I was and am steeped in the
idea.

Feyerabend's position was far more radical. He (and, again, I'm trying not to
misrepresent him, but I haven't read any of his stuff in decades) was trying
to show that science is no more rational than anything else that people do,
that scientists accept or ignore evidence arbitrarily, and that the existence
of a scientific method is a myth. He was wrong, and the Galileo stuff is a
good example. On the one hand, you have, not just Galileo himself, but a bunch
of other people, observing very specific things, and the same things,
repeatably; things that have natural physical explanations. On the other hand,
you have some people who didn't see anything, or just a blur. You're right
that there was little experience of looking through telescopes. But the
failure to make an observation is not an observation. That scientists were
influenced, in their model building, by observations, even in the face of the
inability of some people to make them, does not mean that science is
irrational. That the course of science is complex and mired in politics
doesn't mean that there is no such thing as a scientific method.

~~~
foldr
Again, you're analyzing what Galileo did with the benefit of hindsight. With
hindsight, we know who was using the telescope correctly and who wasn't. At
the time, you had a complex set of rather fuzzy observations made using a
poorly understood instrument, and some of these observations were in conflict
with arguably more reliable observations. Feyerabend is pointing out that
Galileo wasn't right because he was more scientific and more rational than his
critics. In that sense, his decisions to accept certain bits of evidence and
ignore others (e.g. the apparently obvious fact that the Earth is not in
motion) were arbitrary. That is, these decisions did not follow from (and in
fact sometimes went against) the scientific method as it is typically
enunciated. With hindsight, we can offer a post-hoc rational reconstruction of
each decision, but that can't be taken seriously as an account of what Galileo
was actually doing. So yes, the scientific method is a myth if understood as a
set of guidelines the following of which has been a major cause of scientific
progress.

------
pohl
I loved reading SoSR in the Philosophy of Science course I took as an
undergrad. I wrote a term paper about how the discovery of quasicrystals
didn't fit his model. I'd probably be embarrassed to go back and read it, but
I had fun writing it.

