

Grokking Thomas Kuhn’s "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" - stsmytherie
http://philosophy.wisc.edu/forster/220/kuhn.htm

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robg
Perhaps the most influential book on my thinking. It's not a bad metaphor for
how we develop as children, either. The difference though is dinosaur
scientists must die for radical change to occur in their fields. We have to
change how we think by acquiring new knowledge. We go from being Neo-
Platonists to Newtonians within our childhood with the proper education.

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noibl
That's a pretty harsh judgement on the field of paleozoology, there.

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baguasquirrel
You should also read "Overcoming the Two Cultures" by Lee & Wallerstein, if
you liked this. Kuhn's work is mentioned in the context of the broader
conflict between the arts and sciences.

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Stormbringer
Also " _Big Science, Little Science_ " - as far as texts on philosophy of
science go this one is enormously much more accessible than either Popper or
Kuhn.

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highfreq
Isn't Kuhn's theory just part of an outdated meta-scientific paradigm?

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Stormbringer
I see you're just making a joke, but to treat what you said seriously, I think
that the main complaint against Kuhn is that in practice actual science works
quite differently from how he describes it. So yes, Kuhn's ideas represent an
idealized view of what science (perhaps) should be, and as such are
interesting to the same small group of people as find Plato's notion of
shadows on the cave to be interesting. I.e. theory of knowledge or theory of
science people, as compared to say actual scientists.

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kijinbear
I don't think Kuhn was trying to show what ideal science "should be". His
project was first and foremost descriptive. He was reacting against the likes
of Popper's view on what science is (and should be): namely, falsificationism.
Kuhn argued that falsification is not how science normally works, despite the
fact that actual scientists think it does. (He actually spends a whole chapter
discussing why he thinks scientists make this mistake.) Kuhn's work inspired
the Edinburgh school of sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK), which until
recently has remained quite heavy on the descriptive side.

