Structure Of Scientific Revolutions Research Articles

Becoming Italian

Becoming Italian

The ‘Aristotle Experience’ Revisited: Thomas Kuhn Meets Ludwik Fleck on the Road to Structure

Abstract This article takes issue with Kuhn’s description of the ‘Aristotle experience,’ an event that took place in 1947 and that he retrospectively characterized as a revelation that instantly delivered to him the key concepts of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962). We trace a certain transformation of this narrative over time: whereas it commenced from a description of his impression of disparity between the textbook image of science and the study of historical sources, Kuhn started to characterize it as a revelation after learning of the English translation of Fleck’s 1935 Entstehung und Entwicklung einer wissenschaftlichen Tatsache. This book anticipates many central Kuhnian claims. Kuhn read it as early as 1949, but never fully acknowledged it as a source of inspiration. We discuss four hypotheses concerning the possible influence of Fleck’s theory on Kuhn’s in light of the available evidence. We conclude that the degree of similarity between them is too great to be coincidental.

Without Commitment to an Ontology, There Could Be No Causal Inference.

Without Commitment to an Ontology, There Could Be No Causal Inference.

Incommensurability and the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis: taking Kuhn seriously

In this paper, we analyze the debate between the Modern Synthesis and the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis in light of the concept of incommensurability developed by Thomas Kuhn. In order to do so, first we briefly present both the Modern Synthesis and the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis. Then, we clarify the meaning and interpretations of incommensurability throughout Kuhn’s works, concluding that the version of this concept deployed in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is the best suited to the analysis of scientific disputes. After discussing incommensurability in Kuhn’s works, we address the question of whether the Modern Synthesis and the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis can be considered semantically, methodologically, and ontologically incommensurable, concluding that they can. Finally, we discuss three problems that arise from such a conclusion: firstly, what are the consequences of incommensurability; secondly, which mode of scientific change better explains this current dispute in evolutionary biology; and thirdly, whether rational theory comparison is possible given incommensurability. We suggest that the main consequence of incommensurability is profound disagreement, that the kind of scientific change that better explains the current dispute between the MS and the EES may be scientific specialization, and that incommensurability does not preclude rational theory comparison.

From “Paradigm” to “Disciplinary Matrix”: A Fatal Step

The citation index of Thomas Kuhn’s work may strike any imagination. “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” (first edition 1962) is undoubtedly a twentieth-century record-breaker in the field of philosophy of science in terms of such a scientometric parameter. But such fame has been bitter in many ways and placed a heavy burden on the author. For several decades he has been the target of the harshest and most severe criticism. Often the concept of “normal science” and the “scientific revolution” as a “Gestalt switch” was declared ridiculous and absurd. The paper analyses three lines of criticism of Kuhn’s concept: the first came from practicing scientists, the second from specialists in the philosophy of science (primarily proponents of “critical rationalism”), and the third from the field of social epistemology. Reproaches about the political bias of Kuhn’s concept were taken to extremes, since his views were widely popular. In our opinion, Kuhn should be called a victim of spontaneous hypercriticism. This circumstance did not allow him to improve the original model of scientific revolutions. In this respect, replacing the concept of “paradigm” with the concept of “disciplinary matrix” was a step backwards, not forwards. However, it is impossible to deny that in the field of the historiography of science, he acted as a real reformer. With the courage of Don Quixote, he defended the rights of historical reconstruction, the preservation of the historical past of science, which should not be completely assimilated within the framework of the modern system of knowledge. His motto was – “penetrate the minds of other people who lived in the past.” He boldly argued that in the process of historical development, science changes not only ideas about the object of knowledge (representations of the object), but also the reference of its ideas and concepts. Such a formulation of the question has not yet been fully reflected in modern epistemological concepts.

The Post-Postmodern Turn: Challenging the Application of Kuhn's Model

The point of departure for this article is the much-debated death of postmodernism, heralded by influential experts on the subject such as Linda Hutcheon or Ihab Hassan at the beginning of the new millennium. Although the academic community as a whole has not agreed with this fact, there was an intense debate during the first years of the twenty-first century that was evidence of a change of attitude towards this cultural phase. With this in mind, the aim of this study is to provide a theoretical framework for the change in order to understand its nature. Analysing the theories developed by Thomas S. Kuhn on paradigm shifts in the field of science and applying them to the context of critical theory at the beginning of the millennium serves to challenge the very idea of postmodernism as a paradigm in the terms developed in Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

What’s Forgotten About The Structure of Scientific Revolutions?

Abstract Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is a classic, and it is certainly not forgotten. However, an essential aspect about it has been neglected. That is, Kuhn’s Structure is a book in philosophy of history in the sense that Structure attempts gives an account of historical events, focuses on the whole of the history of science and stipulates a structure of the history of science to explain historical events. Kuhn’s book and its contribution to the debates about the progress of science and the contingency and inevitability of the history of science shows why and how philosophy of history is relevant for the history and philosophy of science. Its successful integration of historical and philosophical aspects in one account makes it worthwhile reading also for philosophers of history in the twentieth-first century. In particular, it raises the question whether the historical record can justify philosophical views and comprehensive syntheses of the past.

Kuhn’s Theory of Incommensurability: A Special Reference to Theory of Meaning

The Structure of Scientific Revolution (1962) is the famous work by Thomas Kuhn which challenged traditional understanding of science and philosophy of science. His research activities are wide-ranging; central to his notion of incommensurability are the ideas of meaning variance and lexicon, and the impossibility of translation of terms across different theories. It is closely related to the linguistic analysis of scientific language. The schematic nature of Kuhn’s work and his ongoing clarification of its key concepts fostered additional problems of understanding, interpretation, and attribution. This paper analyses the notion of scientific language in the context of incommensurability with special reference to the theory of meaning. Linguistic experts have not attempted to incorporate Kuhn’s incommensurability to address the issues related to epistemology. This Paper shows how Kuhn’s theory of incommensurability can be applied to linguistics to overcome the problems that arise due to similar lexical terms. It argues that Kuhn’s epistemological analysis of incommensurability, particularly the challenge of understanding the process of symbolization in scientific theories, when applied to linguistics can revolutionize the discipline itself which fills the existing knowledge gap.

Individuals, Communities, and Groups in Thomas Kuhn’s Model of Scientific Development

In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn resorts to concepts from several disciplines in order to describe the general patterns of scientific development. This blend of disciplines can be explained in part by Kuhn's intellectual path, from physics to history and then to philosophy of science; but it also points to a deeper methodological problem, which is the question of what is the real unity of analysis in his model of science. The primary intention of this article is, thus, to give a solution to this difficulty. The answer, I believe, rests on identifying three fundamental units present in Kuhn's theory of scientific development. They are, respectively, the individual, responsible for producing evidence, spreading information, and choosing theories; the community, a set of scientists investigating a series of phenomena; and the groups, individuals with similar behavior but with looser institutional or social ties — a usually neglected category in Kuhnian literature, but equally fundamental for the final outcome of scientific debates. After investigating these categories in detail, I propose a way of integrating them into a general model for explaining the resolution of scientific controversies. Finally, I try to resolve the apparent conflict among disciplinary vocabularies by offering an account of the function of sociological, psychological, and epistemological concepts for describing controversies, and some of the methodologies appropriate for each of these tasks.

ANALYSIS OF PARADIGM SHIFT AND IRRATIONALITY IN THOMAS KUHN’S PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE

In this article, I will explore Kuhn’s arguments concerning his claims of “paradigm shift in science is irrational”. First, I will do this by looking into Kuhn’s opinions about paradigms, normal science, and revolutions by taking reference to his writings. Second, I will try to understand influences and ideas located in “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions”. Third, I will look into the scientific examples that related to Kuhn’s claims about paradigm changes as irrational. I considered the paramount importance of historical and well-known examples in science. This is as to why and how Kuhn has concluded and understood the stages and effects of paradigm changes are irrational in the collective thinking of the masses in the science world. To get the bottom of Kuhn’s claims in the light of wider scientific changes, I will try to demonstrate relationships between Kuhn’s specific notions and these scientific examples. To do this, I came up with the main question and two close objectives so that complete the article in a manner that the article focuses on deeper layers of Kuhn’s claims how paradigm changes in science are irrational.

Misconceptions within neoclassical economics and their possible causes

In his influential book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Kuhn (2012 [1962]) argued that a well-established discipline of science (i.e., normal science) rejects many socially important problems as metaphysical or as concerns of another discipline, if these problems do not fit into the conceptual tools of the paradigm. Just as Kuhn argued, neoclassical economics, as an established mainstream theory, rejects theories, sometimes even whole disciplines like anthropology and ecology, if they seriously conflict with its core assumptions and beliefs. This paper summarises misconceptions within neoclassical economics and their causes such as ideological barriers (preventing a better, holistic, multidisciplinary understanding of economics) and ecological illiteracy. Within the last 20 years, and especially after the financial crash in 2008, critical-minded student and academic associations have criticised mainstream economics education, with suggestions like 'three-fold pluralism' as a general framework for improved education (e.g., Open Letter at http://www.isipe.net). Nevertheless, understanding these ideological and institutional barriers and their possible causes is essential to designing the specific content of a better economics education and to help us build sustainable communities.

ИНЕРЦИЯ ПАРАДИГМЫ НА ПРИМЕРЕ ПОСТСОВЕТСКОГО ВОСТОКОВЕДЕНИЯ

In 1962, Thomas Kuhn’s classic work “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” was published, and while it was an established practice to study history as a series of successive academic paradigms, Thomas Kuhn himself was cautious about the use of his theory in the humanities: He initially envisioned the scheme of history as a change of academic paradigms, some sort of framework studies for use firstly in relation to the natural sciences. Kuhn questioned the aptness of the very term ‘paradigm’, believing its content to be extremely vague. Paradigms, albeit more and more as metaphors, are figure in the historical writing of the development of the humanities. Speaking about the Russian humanities, in the 20th century it went through the two episodes of paradigm change: After 1917 and 1991, respectively (in both cases, contrary to the original model). It is the instability of the humanities to external ideological influences that does not allow Kuhn to fully equate them with the natural sciences. In this article, we nevertheless use the term ‘academic paradigms’ in relation to the humanities. We show that the ideological and political factors that trigger the process of a lightning-fast paradigm shift in the Russian social sciences are the launch and a kind of process of inertia in the development of the social sciences. Using some examples that are relevant for Russian oriental studies, we show that the change of paradigm after 1991 did not lead to a change of discourse in Russian oriental studies. The paradigm shift meant a fundamental transformation of the broad consensus of interpretations of the facts, but it did not change in the same decisive way the range of issues studied.

О конкуренции научных и технических парадигм в условиях идеологического контроля науки

Modern science is, as Thomas Kuhn pointed out in his fundamental work The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, a science that develops in stages: “scientific revolution” – “nor­mal science” – “scientific revolution”. During periods of normal functioning of science, the rules of testing and testing show established and perceived without reflection para­digms, but in the case of technical disciplines, this rule does not work, since technical paradigms do not change according to the same rules as other scientific paradigms. To change technical paradigms, you only need to accept them by the expert community – you also need to accept them by technical consumers. The article discusses the difficul­ties of defining the concepts of “technology” and “technical knowledge” as knowledge about artifacts, their use and the consequences of their use (Bernhard Irrgang). On two examples of the control of technical paradigms in two totalitarian regimes of the twenti­eth century (Lysenkoism, or Lysenkovshchina and “Aryan physics”), the role of para­digms in the situation of ideological control is presented. In these cases, we used at­tempts to “correct” genetics and quantum physics (more precisely, to completely abandon it), respectively. Of course, this control brought biology in the Soviet Union and physics in Nazi Germany to the brink of disaster. In this article, with the help of Gisle Solbu's theory of epi-knowing (knowledge at the general educational level), we propose solutions to the problem of purposeful ideological interference in the scientific and ideo­logical adjustments of not only scientific paradigms, but also scientific paradigms.

Dragons, Monsters, Emotions, Cavemen and Kuhn’s Epistemology: Scientific Revolutions in Films

Background : There have been many discussions on the importance of teaching philosophy of science in schools, and the need of a teaching focused on the science process, seeking to remedy deformed views that distance children from scientific life. Kuhn is undoubtedly the science philosopher most debated in history and his work “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” has significant potential to construct proper views of the scientist in primary education. Films are important pedagogic tools to transmit concepts and ideas in a rich and engaging way. Objectives : The present work identified the presence of Kuhn ideas in four animated films and the competences of science procedures in their characters. Design : We selected the films “How to Train Your Dragon”, “The Croods”, “Inside Out” and “Monsters, Inc.”. Within those, we seek for paradigms, paradigm shifts, scientific revolutions, and the competences for scientific investigation on the characters. Setting and Participants : This is a theoretical analysis, and therefore does not have participants. The materials used were only bibliographic sources . Data collection and analysis : We used ten scientific competences and made a philosophical reflection of Kuhn's theory in the films. Results : The analysis reveals the occurrence of normal science, recognized anomalies, extraordinary science and break of paradigms in all those films. In addition, we identified the competences of science procedures of the characters. Conclusions : The films make an artistic representation of situations where Kuhn concepts and the scientific competences can be taught in a clear and significant way.

How Can the Living Ties be Severed in the Field of Culture

In this paper we will try to apply Kuhn’s views on the structure of scientific revolutions in the field of culture and film art. We will try to find to what extent we can apply or reject such understandings of the field of culture, even if only in the strictly national dimensions of a cultural phenomenon. By tracking the development of the film art and industry through the changes they cause or the cultural functions they perform, we can verify whether and to what extent the ideal in science is comparable to the ideal in the culture and the arts. We will also be looking for anomalies, non-functional paradigms and paradoxes, which could influence not only the development of culture in national context, but also the construction of the essential matter of the cultural field as a unique global phenomenon, the result of human activity, ideas and creativity.Through the history of building the first movie theater “Modern Theater” in Bulgaria, in 1908, the beginning and evolution of cinema as an art, a national cine-ma industry, film networks and film distribution, film studies and film education will trace the genesis of a new layer in the field of the Bulgarian national culture and the preconditions for its sustainability, significance and vitality.

Lessons educators could learn from Thomas Kuhn's the structure of scientific revolutions

Lessons educators could learn from Thomas Kuhn's the structure of scientific revolutions

Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962)

Thomas Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) is the bestselling and most-cited book ever published in the history and philosophy of science. Yet very few scholars in those fields would now endorse the book’s main claims, and many are critical of its central premise: namely, that major changes in different disciplines and diverse historical contexts conform to a single “structure.” Key Kuhnian concepts such as “paradigm shift” have become part of everyday language but all but disappeared from specialist publications. Nonetheless, the book still galvanizes readers encountering it for the first time—or even scholars who haven’t reread it since their own student days. Kuhn’s description of allencompassing and incommensurable mental worlds inhabited by scientists who practice in different paradigms resonates with the experience of readers who have experienced seismic changes in moral and political intuitions.

Editors’ Letter

Editors’ Letter

쿤의 『과학혁명의 구조』에서 서사와 은유의 역할

쿤의 『과학혁명의 구조』는 현대적인 과학관의 핵심을 점하는 과학혁명론을 주창한 책으로 과학철학과 인접 관련 분야에서 많은 후속 연구를 유발하였지만 수사학적 분석 대상이 된 적은 거의 없다. 이 책의 특성을 수사학적으로 분석할 때 서사와 은유는 관심의 초점이 될 만하다. 『과학혁명의 구조』는 서사와 은유를 주된 논증의 자원으로 활용하여 설득의 효과를 충분히 달성한다. 저자가 이 책에 포괄적이면서도 근본적인 주장을 담으면서도 독자들에게 많은 호응을 끌어낼 수 있었던 것은, 역사와 심리학 실험으로부터 서사를 끌어다가 수립한 과학 진행의 서사가 서사적 개연성과 서사적 충실성을 확보했기 때문이다. 또한 저자는 ‘패러다임’, ‘정상과학,’ ‘과학혁명’과 같은 주요 용어들에 그의 주장을 담아내기 위한 독특한 의미를 부여하면서 은유를 적극적으로 활용하였다. 은유의 도입은 인지적, 설득적 도구로서 고유의 기능을 발휘함으로써 설명의 용이함을 가져옴과 동시에 개념의 모호함의 여지를 남겼다. 결과적으로 서사와 은유를 다각적으로 활용한 이 책의 논증 방식은 큰 설득력을 발휘하는 성공 요인이 되었음을 알 수 있다.

Reproduction reimagined

Reproduction reimagined