[lit-ideas] Re: Donal's New Paradigm
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 26 Feb 2016 08:55:57 +0000 (UTC)
Apparently, Popper disliked Kuhn, so it's refereshing that McEvoy is using
a keyword as used by someone Popper disliked.>
Source? Popper's book of "My Likes and Dislikes" or "This Time It's Personal
(By the Author of 'Objective Knowledge')"? What evidence is there that Kuhn was
"someone Popper disliked"?
Kuhn was one of the ablest in Popper's classes and Kuhn's work bears an
unmistakable Popperian stamp. Kuhn's _TSOSR_ also has a wealth of historical
information that may make it much more engaging than a logic-based text like
Popper's _LdF_. Kuhn's views also chime with biases in the humanities which see
all knowledge as subjective and which like the idea that science is simply one
distinct discourse with its own 'subjectivity': at their crudest, Kuhn's views
give succour to the arrogance of the scientifically illiterate that they know
all they need to know about science and its worth.
Popper's disagreement with Kuhn is not much about the facts of scientific
history simpliciter but about the model appropriate to explain and understand
those facts.
Beneath Kuhn's history lies Kuhn's model of scientific change (or lack of
change as mostly scientists engage in routine puzzle-solving, according to
Kuhn). It is this model that constitutes the philosophic worth of _TSOSR_, not
the history.
Popper disagrees with Kuhn's model. This is different from disliking Kuhn.
Books have been written comparing and contrasting the Popper and Kuhn models.
The better ones see that Popper's model is better, essentially because more
logically based and rigorous and based on a much more considered and explicit
theory of knowledge. Kuhn's model is actually quite muffled when looked at
closely.
A first important point is that the correctness of either model cannot be read
off from the history of science - whereas some of Kuhn's followers may be
naively influenced by the assumption Kuhn is right because his model is
history-based. But how a model, as a normative construct, is based on history
is highly problematic: Popper's model also fits the history of science, and it
is clear that more than one model can dovetail with many facts in the history
of science. The upshot is that the history of science, though relevant, cannot
be used to decide between alternative models which may each 'fit' many facts in
the history of science.
Perhaps the second important point is that the hinges on which a paradigm-shift
take place are not clearly explained in Kuhn's model - Kuhn compares a
paradigm-shift to a gestalt-switch, and in his model it would appear that what
scientists have in times of a scientific revolution is a 'crisis of faith' and
eventually a new faith emerges and they switch faiths at some critical point.
Kuhn's views are however muddied because he writes as if the history shows his
model even when the history can be variously modelled, and so fundamental
aspects of his model are unclear. Nevertheless, Kuhn's view can be
characterisised as 'fideistic' - as if science is a 'belief-system'. In Kuhn's
view it would appear no more rational to switch from Newtonian to Einsteinian
physics than it is rational to switch from a Catholic to a Protestant view of
'transubstantiation' (or back again). This fideistic irrationalism is at the
heart of Kuhn's model and is its central weakness, for it is surely bollocks to
hold to a position according to the switch from Newtonian to Einsteinian
physics is no more rational than switching creeds re 'transubstantiation'
'consubstantiation' and the like.
Even Kuhn cannot come out clearly in favour of the above "bollocks" and so Kuhn
in his later publications chops and changes so as to maintain his model while
trying to deny its irrationalist consequences: but the fact remains that there
is an explanatory void at the heart of Kuhn's model of paradigm-shift in that
the shift cannot be explained in rational terms - for no rational terms are
analysed as being decisive in a scientific revolution, instead there is simply
a switch of paradigm.
By contrast, Popper's view sees science as a form of "objective knowledge" and
not a system of belief, and as making change rationally under the control of
rational critical discussion (which involves also critical tests). These
critical tests are vital to why only a crank would stick to Newtonian physics
as true as against Einstein's - and such critical tests are one the things that
makes this scientific revolution very different in rational terms to a
religious schism.
That may do for now. But it is another JLS' travesty to reduce these kinds of
issue to issues of personal animosity between disputants. Notably, Popper
credits Kuhn with opening his eyes to the rise of so-called "normal science" -
but, for Popper, this rise endangers science as a form of rational critical
knowledge based on argument and testing.
DL
On Friday, 26 February 2016, 0:02, "dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx"
<dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
In a message dated 2/25/2016 6:39:40 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,
donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx writes: "Don't have one obviously. ... Anyway we
always
need a new paradigm."
This seems nicely tautological -- and almost like Wason's selection task.
i. Obviously, if Donal DOES have a new paradigm, he does not need one.
ii. Unless he does.
Apparently, Popper disliked Kuhn, so it's refereshing that McEvoy is using
a keyword as used by someone Popper disliked.
Grice said, "Do not multiply senses beyond necessity", but I believe that
if one word has received more senses than it should (while it only has one,
of course) that's paradigm.
Exemplars of good science are what Kuhn refers to when he uses the term ‘
paradigm’ in a narrower "sense".
He cites Aristotle's analysis of motion, Ptolemy's computations of plantery
positions, Lavoisier's application of the balance, and Maxwell's
mathematization of the electromagnetic field as "paradigms".
Exemplary instances of science are typically to be found in books and
papers, and so Kuhn often ALSO describes great texts as "paradigms" —
Ptolemy's
Almagest, Lavoisier's Traité élémentaire de chimie, and Newton's Principia
Mathematica and Opticks.
Such texts contain not only the key theories and laws, but also—and this is
what makes them "paradigms"—the applications of those theories in the
solution of important problems, along with the new experimental or
mathematical
techniques (such as the chemical balance in Traité élémentaire de chimie
and the calculus in Principia Mathematica) employed in those applications.
In the postscript to the second edition of The Structure of Scientific
Revolutions Kuhn says of "paradigms" in this "sense" (he was confused, from a
Griceian point of view) that they are "the most novel and least understood
aspect of this book".
The claim that the consensus of a disciplinary matrix is primarily
agreement on "paradigms"-as-exemplars is intended to explain the nature of
normal
science and the process of crisis, revolution, and renewal of normal
science.
It also explains the birth of a mature science.
Kuhn describes an immature science, in what he sometimes calls its
"pre-paradigm" period (as when someone needs a new paradigm -- cfr. "We always
need a new paradigm" -- is this tautological?) as lacking consensus.
Competing schools of thought possess differing procedures, theories, even
metaphysical presuppositions.
Consequently there is little opportunity for collective progress.
Even localized progress by a particular school is made difficult, since
much intellectual energy is put into arguing over the fundamentals with other
schools instead of developing a research tradition.
However, progress is not impossible, and one school may make a breakthrough
whereby the shared problems of the competing schools are solved in a
particularly impressive fashion.
This success draws away adherents from the other schools, and a widespread
consensus is formed around the new puzzle-solutions.
This widespread consensus now permits agreement on fundamentals.
For a problem-solution will embody particular theories, procedures and
instrumentation, scientific language, metaphysics, and so forth.
Consensus on the puzzle-solution will thus bring consensus on these other
aspects of a disciplinary matrix also.
The successful puzzle-solution, now a paradigm puzzle-solution, will not
solve all problems.
Indeed, it will probably raise new puzzles.
For example, the theories it employs may involve a constant whose value is
not known with precision.
The "paradigm" puzzle-solution may employ approximations that could be
improved.
It may suggest other puzzles of the same kind; it may suggest new areas for
investigation.
Generating new puzzles is one thing that the "paradigm" puzzle-solution
does; helping solve them is another.
In the most favourable scenario, the new puzzles raised by the "paradigm"
puzzle-solution can be addressed and answered using precisely the techniques
that the "paradigm" puzzle-solution employs.
And since the "paradigm" puzzle-solution is accepted as a great
achievement, these very similar puzzle-solutions will be accepted as successful
solutions also.
This is why Kuhn uses the terms ‘exemplar’ and notably "paradigm".
For the novel puzzle-solution which crystallizes consensus is regarded and
used as a model of exemplary science.
In the research tradition it inaugurates, a "paradigm"-as-exemplar fulfils
three functions.
First, suggests new puzzles.
Second, it suggests approaches to solving those puzzles.
Third, it is the standard by which the quality of a proposed
puzzle-solution can be measured.
In each case it is similarity to the exemplar that is the scientists’
guide.
That normal science proceeds on the basis of perceived similarity to
exemplars is an important and distinctive feature of Kuhn's new picture of
scientific development.
The standard view explained the cumulative addition of new knowledge in
terms of the application of the scientific method.
Allegedly, the scientific method encapsulates the rules of scientific
rationality.
It may be that those rules could not account for the creative side of
science—the generation of new hypotheses.
The latter was thus designated ‘the context of discovery’, leaving the
rules of rationality to decide in the ‘context of justification’ whether a
new hypothesis should, in the light of the evidence, be added to the stock of
accepted theories.
Kuhn rejected the distinction between the context of discovery and the
context of justification, and correspondingly rejected the standard account of
each.
As regards the context of discovery, the standard view held that the
philosophy of science had nothing to say on the issue of the functioning of the
creative imagination.
But Kuhn's "paradigm" does provide a partial explanation, since training
with exemplars enables scientists to see new puzzle-situations in terms of
familiar puzzles and hence enables them to see potential solutions to their
new puzzles.
More important for Kuhn was the way his account of the context of
justification diverged from the standard picture.
The functioning of exemplars is intended explicitly to contrast with the
operation of rules.
The key determinant in the acceptability of a proposed puzzle-solution is
its similarity to the "paradigmatic" puzzle-solutions.
Perception of similarity cannot be reduced to rules, and a fortiori cannot
be reduced to rules of rationality.
This rejection of rules of rationality was one of the factors that led
Kuhn's critics to accuse him of irrationalism—regarding science as irrational.
In this respect at least the accusation is wide of the mark.
For to deny that some cognitive process is the outcome of applying rules of
rationality is not to imply that it is an irrational process.
The perception of similarity in appearance between two members of the same
family also cannot be reduced to the application of rules of rationality.
Kuhn's innovation in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions was to suggest
that a key element in cognition in science operates in the same fashion.
And he succeeded!
Cheers,
Speranza
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