Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions - Outline
Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions - Outline
Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions - Outline
A. A scientific community cannot practice its trade without some set of received beliefs (p. 4).
. These beliefs form the foundation of the "educational initiation that prepares and
licenses the student for professional practice" (5).
. The nature of the "rigorous and rigid" preparation helps ensure that the received
beliefs exert a "deep hold" on the student's mind.
B. Normal science "is predicated on the assumption that the scientific community knows
what the world is like" (5)—scientists take great pains to defend that assumption.
C. To this end, "normal science often suppresses fundamental novelties because they are
necessarily subversive of its basic commitments" (5).
D. Research is "a strenuous and devoted attempt to force nature into the conceptual boxes
supplied by professional education" (5).
E. A shift in professional commitments to shared assumptions takes place when an anomaly
"subverts the existing tradition of scientific practice" (6). These shifts are what Kuhn
describes as scientific revolutions—"the tradition-shattering complements to the tradition-
bound activity of normal science" (6).
. New assumptions (paradigms/theories) require the reconstruction of prior
assumptions and the reevaluation of prior facts. This is difficult and time consuming.
It is also strongly resisted by the established community.
. When a shift takes place, "a scientist's world is qualitatively transformed [and]
quantitatively enriched by fundamental novelties of either fact or theory" (7).
A. Normal science "means research firmly based upon one or more past scientific
achievements, achievements that some particular scientific community acknowledges for
a time as supplying the foundation for its further practice" (10).
. These achievements must be
a. sufficiently unprecedented to attract an enduring group of adherents away
from competing modes of scientific activity and
b. sufficiently open-ended to leave all sorts of problems for the redefined group
of practitioners (and their students) to resolve, i. e., research.
. These achievements can be called paradigms (10).
. "The road to a firm research consensus is extraordinarily arduous" (15).
B. "The successive transition from one paradigm to another via revolution is the usual
developmental pattern of mature science" (12).
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C. Students study these paradigms in order to become members of the particular scientific
community in which they will later practice.
. Because the student largely learns from and is mentored by researchers "who
learned the bases of their field from the same concrete models" (11), there is seldom
disagreement over fundamentals.
. Men whose research is based on shared paradigms are committed to the same rules
and standards for scientific practice (11).
. A shared commitment to a paradigm ensures that its practitioners engage in the
paradigmatic observations that its own paradigm can do most to explain (13), i.e.,
investigate the kinds of research questions to which their own theories can most
easily provide answers.
D. "It remains an open question what parts of social science have yet acquired such
paradigms" (15). [psychology? education? teacher education? sociology?]
E. Paradigms help scientific communities to bound their discipline in that they help the
scientist to
. create avenues of inquiry.
. formulate questions.
. select methods with which to examine questions.
. define areas of relevance.
. [establish/create meaning?]
F. "In the absence of a paradigm or some candidate for paradigm, all the facts that could
possibly pertain to the development of a given science are likely to seem equally relevant"
(15).
G. A paradigm is essential to scientific inquiry—"no natural history can be interpreted in the
absence of at least some implicit body of intertwined theoretical and methodological
belief that permits selection, evaluation, and criticism" (16-17).
H. How are paradigms created, and how do scientific revolutions take place?
. Inquiry begins with a random collection of "mere facts" (although, often, a body of
beliefs is already implicit in the collection).
a. During these early stages of inquiry, different researchers confronting the
same phenomena describe and interpret them in different ways (17).
b. In time, these descriptions and interpretations entirely disappear.
. A preparadigmatic school (movement) appears.
a. Such a school often emphasizes a special part of the collection of facts.
b. Often, these schools vie for preeminence.
. From the competition of preparadigmatic schools, one paradigm emerges—"To be
accepted as a paradigm, a theory must seem better than its competitors, but it need
not, and in fact never does, explain all the facts with which it can be confronted" (17-
18), thus making research possible.
. As a paradigm grows in strength and in the number of advocates, the
preparadigmatic schools (or the previous paradigm) fade.
a. "When an individual or group first produces a synthesis able to attract most of
the next generation's practitioners, the older schools gradually disappear" (18).
b. Those with "older views . . . are simply read out of the profession and their
work is subsequently ignored. If they do not accommodate their work to the
new paradigm, they are doomed to isolation or must attach themselves to
some other group" (19), or move to a department of philosophy (or history).
. A paradigm transforms a group into a profession or, at least, a discipline (19). And from
this follow the
a. formation of specialized journals.
b. foundation of professional societies (or specialized groups within societies—
SIGs).
c. claim to a special place in academe (and academe's curriculum).
d. fact that members of the group need no longer build their field anew—first
principles, justification of concepts, questions, and methods. Such endeavors
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A. When they first appear, paradigms are limited in scope and in precision.
B. "Paradigms gain their status because they are more successful than their competitors in
solving a few problems that the group of practitioners has come to recognize as acute"
(23).
. But more successful does not mean completely successful with a single problem or
notably successful with any large number (23).
. Initially, a paradigm offers the promise of success.
. Normal science consists in the actualization of that promise. This is achieved by
a. extending the knowledge of those facts that the paradigm displays as
particularly revealing,
b. increasing the extent of the match between those facts and the paradigm's
predictions,
c. and further articulation of the paradigm itself.
. In other words, there is a good deal of mopping-up to be done.
a. Mop-up operations are what engage most scientists throughout their careers.
b. Mopping-up is what normal science is all about!
c. This paradigm-based research (25) is "an attempt to force nature into the
preformed and relatively inflexible box that the paradigm supplies" (24).
i. no effort made to call forth new sorts of phenomena.
ii. no effort to discover anomalies.
iii. when anomalies pop up, they are usually discarded or ignored.
iv. anomalies usually not even noticed (tunnel vision/one track mind).
v. no effort to invent new theory (and no tolerance for those who try).
vi. "Normal-scientific research is directed to the articulation of those
phenomena and theories that the paradigm already supplies" (24).
vii. "Perhaps these are defects . . . "
. ". . . but those restrictions, born from confidence in a paradigm,
turn out to be essential to the development of science. By
focusing attention on a small range of relatively esoteric
problems, the paradigm forces scientists to investigate some part
of nature in a detail and depth that would otherwise be
unimaginable" (24).
. . . . and, when the paradigm ceases to function properly, scientists
begin to behave differently and the nature of their research
problems changes.
d. Mopping-up can prove fascinating work (24). [You do it. We all do it. And we
love to do it. In fact, we'd do it for free.]
C. The principal problems of normal science.
. Determination of significant fact.
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A. A striking feature of doing research is that the aim is to discover what is known in advance.
. This in spite of the fact that the range of anticipated results is small compared to the
possible results.
. When the outcome of a research project does not fall into this anticipated result
range, it is generally considered a failure, i.e., when "significance" is not obtained.
a. Studies that fail to find the expected are usually not published.
b. The proliferation of studies that find the expected helps ensure that the
paradigm/theory will flourish.
. Even a project that aims at paradigm articulation does not aim at unexpected
novelty.
. "One of the things a scientific community acquires with a paradigm is a criterion for
choosing problems that, while the paradigm is taken for granted, can be assumed to
have solutions" (37).
a. The intrinsic value of a research question is not a criterion for selecting it.
b. The assurance that the question has an answer is the criterion (37).
c. "The man who is striving to solve a problem defined by existing knowledge and
technique is not just looking around. He knows what he wants to achieve, and he
designs his instruments and directs his thoughts accordingly" (96).
B. So why do research?
. Results add to the scope and precision with which a paradigm/theory can be applied.
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. The way to obtain the results usually remains very much in doubt—this is the
challenge of the puzzle.
. Solving the puzzle can be fun, and expert puzzle-solvers make a very nice living.
C. To classify as a puzzle (as a genuine research question), a problem must be characterized
by more than the assured solution.
. There exists a strong network of commitments—conceptual, theoretical,
instrumental, and methodological.
. There are "rules" that limit
a. the nature of acceptable solutions—there are "restrictions that bound the
admissible solutions to theoretical problems" (39).
i. Solutions should be consistent with paradigmatic assumptions.
ii. There are quasi-metaphysical commitments to consider.
iii. There may also be historical ties to consider.
b. the steps by which they are to be obtained (methodology).
i. commitments to preferred types of instrumentations.
ii. the ways in which accepted instruments may legitimately be employed.
D. Despite the fact that novelty is not sought and that accepted belief is generally not
challenged, the scientific enterprise can and does bring about such unexpected results.
A. The paradigms of a mature scientific community can be determined with relative ease
(43).
B. The "rules" used by scientists who share a paradigm are not easily determined. Some
reasons for this are that
. scientists can disagree on the interpretation of a paradigm.
. the existence of a paradigm need not imply that any full set of rules exist.
. scientists are often guided by tacit knowledge—knowledge acquired through
practice and that cannot be articulated explicitly (Polanyi, 1958).
. the attributes shared by a paradigm are not always readily apparent.
. "paradigms may be prior to, more binding, and more complete than any set of rules
for research that could be unequivocally abstracted from them" (46).
C. Paradigms can determine normal science without the intervention of discoverable rules or
shared assumptions (46). In part, this is because
. it is very difficult to discover the rules that guide particular normal-science
traditions.
. scientists never learn concepts, laws, and theories in the abstract and by
themselves.
a. They generally learn these with and through their applications.
b. New theory is taught in tandem with its application to a concrete range of
phenomena.
c. "The process of learning a theory depends on the study of applications" (47).
d. The problems that students encounter from freshman year through doctoral
program, as well as those they will tackle during their careers, are always
closely modeled on previous achievements.
. Scientists who share a paradigm generally accept without question the particular
problem-solutions already achieved (47).
. Although a single paradigm may serve many scientific groups, it is not the same
paradigm for them all.
a. Subspecialties are differently educated and focus on different applications for
their research findings.
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A. Normal science does not aim at novelties of fact or theory and, when successful, finds
none.
B. Nonetheless, new and unsuspected phenomena are repeatedly uncovered by scientific
research, and radical new theories have again and again been invented by scientists (52).
C. Fundamental novelties of fact and theory bring about paradigm change.
D. So how does paradigm change come about?
. Discovery—novelty of fact.
a. Discovery begins with the awareness of anomaly.
i. The recognition that nature has violated the paradigm-induced
expectations that govern normal science.
ii. A phenomenon for which a paradigm has not readied the investigator.
b. Perceiving an anomaly is essential for perceiving novelty (although the first
does not always lead to the second, i.e., anomalies can be ignored, denied, or
unacknowledged).
c. The area of the anomaly is then explored.
d. The paradigm change is complete when the paradigm/theory has been
adjusted so that the anomalous become the expected.
e. The result is that the scientist is able "to see nature in a different way" (53).
f. But careful: Discovery involves an extended process of conceptual assimilation,
but assimilating new information does not always lead to paradigm change.
. Invention—novelty of theory.
a. Not all theories are paradigm theories.
b. Unanticipated outcomes derived from theoretical studies can lead to the
perception of an anomaly and the awareness of novelty.
c. How paradigms change as a result of invention is discussed in greater detail in
the following chapter.
E. The process of paradigm change is closely tied to the nature of perceptual (conceptual)
change in an individual—Novelty emerges only with difficulty, manifested by resistance,
against a background provided by expectation (64).
F. Although normal science is a pursuit not directed to novelties and tending at first to
suppress them, it is nonetheless very effective in causing them to arise. Why?
. An initial paradigm accounts quite successfully for most of the observations and
experiments readily accessible to that science's practitioners.
. Research results in
a. the construction of elaborate equipment,
b. development of an esoteric and shared vocabulary,
c. refinement of concepts that increasingly lessens their resemblance to their
usual common-sense prototypes.
. This professionalization leads to
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A. As is the case with discovery, a change in an existing theory that results in the invention of
a new theory is also brought about by the awareness of anomaly.
B. The emergence of a new theory is generated by the persistent failure of the puzzles of
normal science to be solved as they should. Failure of existing rules is the prelude to a search
for new ones (68). These failures can be brought about by
. observed discrepancies between theory and fact—this is the "core of the crisis" (69).
. changes in social/cultural climates (knowledge/beliefs are socially constructed?).
a. There are strong historical precedents for this: Copernicus, Freud,
behaviorism? constructivism?
b. Science is often "ridden by dogma" (75)—what may be the effect on science
(or art) by an atmosphere of political correctness?
. scholarly criticism of existing theory.
C. Such failures are generally long recognized, which is why crises are seldom surprising.
. Neither problems nor puzzles yield often to the first attack (75).
. Recall that paradigm and theory resist change and are extremely resilient.
D. Philosophers of science have repeatedly demonstrated that more than one theoretical
construction can always be placed upon a given collection of data (76).
. In early stages of a paradigm, such theoretical alternatives are easily invented.
. Once a paradigm is entrenched (and the tools of the paradigm prove useful to solve
the problems the paradigm defines), theoretical alternatives are strongly resisted.
a. As in manufacture so in science—retooling is an extravagance to be reserved for
the occasion that demands it (76).
b. Crises provide the opportunity to retool.
A. Normal science does and must continually strive to bring theory and fact into closer
agreement.
B. The recognition and acknowledgment of anomalies result in crises that are a necessary
precondition for the emergence of novel theories and for paradigm change.
. Crisis is the essential tension implicit in scientific research (79).
. There is no such thing as research without counterinstances, i.e., anomaly.
a. These counterinstances create tension and crisis.
b. Crisis is always implicit in research because every problem that normal science
sees as a puzzle can be seen, from another viewpoint, as a counterinstance
and thus as a source of crisis (79).
C. In responding to these crises, scientists generally do not renounce the paradigm that has
led them into crisis.
. They may lose faith and consider alternatives, but
. they generally do not treat anomalies as counterinstances of expected outcomes.
. They devise numerous articulations and ad hoc modifications of their theory in order
to eliminate any apparent conflict.
. Some, unable to tolerate the crisis (and thus unable to live in a world out of joint),
leave the profession.
. As a rule, persistent and recognized anomaly does not induce crisis (81).
. Failure to achieve the expected solution to a puzzle discredits only the scientist and
not the theory ("it is a poor carpenter who blames his tools").
. Science is taught to ensure confirmation-theory.
. Science students accept theories on the authority of teacher and text—what
alternative do they have, or what competence?
D. To evoke a crisis, an anomaly must usually be more than just an anomaly.
. After all, there are always anomalies (counterinstances).
. Scientists who paused and examined every anomaly would not get much
accomplished.
. An anomaly can call into question fundamental generalizations of the paradigm.
. An anomaly without apparent fundamental import may also evoke crisis if the
applications that it inhibits have a particular practical importance.
. An anomaly must come to be seen as more than just another puzzle of normal
science.
. In the face of efforts outlined in C above, the anomaly must continue to resist.
E. All crises begin with the blurring of a paradigm and the consequent loosening of the rules
for normal research. As this process develops,
. the anomaly comes to be more generally recognized as such.
. more attention is devoted to it by more of the field's eminent authorities.
. the field begins to look quite different.
. scientists express explicit discontent.
. competing articulations of the paradigm proliferate.
. scholars view a resolution as the subject matter of their discipline. To this end, they
a. first isolate the anomaly more precisely and give it structure.
b. push the rules of normal science harder than ever to see, in the area of
difficulty, just where and how far they can be made to work.
c. seek for ways of magnifying the breakdown.
d. generate speculative theories.
i. If successful, one theory may disclose the road to a new paradigm.
ii. If unsuccessful, the theories can be surrendered with relative ease.
e. may turn to philosophical analysis and debate over fundamentals as a device
for unlocking the riddles of their field.
. crisis often proliferates new discoveries.
F. All crises close in one of three ways.
. Normal science proves able to handle the crisis-provoking problem and all returns to
"normal."
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. The problem resists and is labeled, but it is perceived as resulting from the field's
failure to possess the necessary tools with which to solve it, and so scientists set it
aside for a future generation with more developed tools.
. A new candidate for paradigm emerges, and a battle over its acceptance ensues (84)
—these are the paradigm wars.
a. Once it has achieved the status of paradigm, a paradigm is declared invalid
only if an alternate candidate is available to take its place (77).
i. Because there is no such thing as research in the absence of a paradigm,
to reject one paradigm without simultaneously substituting another is
to reject science itself.
ii. To declare a paradigm invalid will require more than the falsification of
the paradigm by direct comparison with nature.
iii. The judgment leading to this decision involves the comparison of the
existing paradigm with nature and with the alternate candidate.
b. Transition from a paradigm in crisis to a new one from which a new tradition of
normal science can emerge is not a cumulative process. It is a reconstruction of
the field from new fundamentals (85). This reconstruction
i. changes some of the field's foundational theoretical generalizations.
ii. changes methods and applications.
iii. alters the rules.
c. How do new paradigms finally emerge?
i. Some emerge all at once, sometimes in the middle of the night, in the
mind of a man deeply immersed in crisis.
ii. Those who achieve fundamental inventions of a new paradigm have
generally been either very young or very new to the field whose
paradigm they changed.
iii. Much of this process is inscrutable and may be permanently so.
G. When a transition from former to alternate paradigm is complete, the profession changes
its view of the field, its methods, and its goals.
. This reorientation has been described as "handling the same bundle of data as
before, but placing them in a new system of relations with one another by giving
them a different framework" or "picking up the other end of the stick" (85).
. Some describe the reorientation as a gestalt shift.
. Kuhn argues that the gestalt metaphor is misleading: "Scientists do not see
something as something else; instead, they simply see it" (85).
H. The emergence of a new paradigm/theory breaks with one tradition of scientific practice
that is perceived to have gone badly astray and introduces a new one conducted under
different rules and within a different universe of discourse.
I. The transition to a new paradigm is scientific revolution—and this is the transition from
normal to extraordinary research.
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. Political revolutions begin with a growing sense by members of the community that
existing institutions have ceased adequately to meet the problems posed by an
environment that they have in part created—anomaly and crisis.
. The dissatisfaction with existing institutions is generally restricted to a segment of
the political community.
. Political revolutions aim to change political institutions in ways that those
institutions themselves prohibit.
. During a revolution's interim, society is not fully governed by institutions at all.
. In increasing numbers, individuals become increasingly estranged from political life
and behave more and more eccentrically within it.
. As crisis deepens, individuals commit themselves to some concrete proposal for the
reconstruction of society in a new institutional framework.
. Competing camps and parties form.
a. One camp seeks to defend the old institutional constellation.
b. One (or more) camps seek to institute a new political order.
. As polarization occurs, political recourse fails.
. Parties to a revolutionary conflict finally resort to the techniques of mass persuasion.
C. Like the choice between competing political institutions, that between competing
paradigms proves to be a choice between fundamentally incompatible modes of
community life. Paradigmatic differences cannot be reconciled.
. The evaluative procedures characteristic of normal science do not work, for these
depend on a particular paradigm for their existence.
. When paradigms enter into a debate about fundamental questions and paradigm
choice, each group uses its own paradigm to argue in that paradigm's defense—the
result is a circularity and inability to share a universe of discourse.
. Fundamental paradigmatic assumptions are philosophically incompatible.
. Ultimately, scientific revolutions are affected by
a. the impact of nature and of logic.
b. techniques of persuasive argumentation (a struggle between stories?).
. A successful new paradigm/theory permits predictions that are different from those
derived from its predecessor (98).
a. That difference could not occur if the two were logically compatible.
b. In the process of being assimilated, the second must displace the first.
D. Consequently, the assimilation of either a new sort of phenomenon or a new scientific theory
must demand the rejection of an older paradigm (95).
. If this were not so, scientific development would be genuinely cumulative (the view
of science-as-cumulation or logical inclusiveness—see Chapter X).
. Recall that cumulative acquisition of unanticipated novelties proves to be an almost
nonexistent exception to the rule of scientific development—cumulative acquisition
of novelty is not only rare in fact but improbable in principle (96).
. Normal research is cumulative, but not scientific revolution.
. New paradigms arise with destructive changes in beliefs about nature (98).
. Kuhn observes that his view is not the prevalent view. The prevalent view maintains
that a new paradigm derives from, or is a cumulative addition to, the supplanted
paradigm. [Note: This was the case in the late 1950s and early 1960s, when the book was published,
but it is not the case today. As Kuhn points out, logical positivists were carrying the day then, but
Structure proved revolutionary itself, and Kuhn's view is reasonably influential these days. Many would
argue that Kuhn's view is now the prevalent view.] Objections to Kuhn's view include that
a. only the extravagant claims of the old paradigm are contested.
b. purged of these merely human extravagances, many old paradigms have
never been and can never be challenged (e.g., Newtonian physics,
behaviorism? psychoanalytic theory? logical positivism?).
c. a scientist can reasonably work within the framework of more than one
paradigm (and so eclecticism and, to some extent, relativism rear their heads).
. Kuhn refutes this logical positivist view, arguing that
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a. the logical positivist view makes any theory ever used by a significant group of
competent scientists immune to attack.
b. to save paradigms/theories in this way, their range of application must be
restricted to those phenomena and to that precision of observation with
which the experimental evidence in hand already deals.
c. the rejection of a paradigm requires the rejection of its fundamental
assumptions and of its rules for doing science—they are incompatible with
those of the new paradigm.
d. if the fundamental assumptions of old and new paradigm were not
incompatible, novelty could always be explained within the framework of the
old paradigm and crisis can always be avoided.
e. revolution is not cumulation; revolution is transformation.
f. the price of significant scientific advance is a commitment that runs the risk of
being wrong.
g. without commitment to a paradigm there can be no normal science.
h. the need to change the meaning of established and familiar concepts is
central to the revolutionary impact of a new paradigm.
i. the differences between successive paradigms are both necessary and
irreconcilable. Why?
i. because successive paradigms tell us different things about the
population of the universe and about that population's behavior.
ii. because paradigms are the source of the methods, problem-field, and
standards of solution accepted by any mature scientific community at
any given time.
j. the reception of a new paradigm often necessitates a redefinition of the
corresponding science (103).
i. Old problems are relegated to other sciences or declared unscientific.
ii. Problems previously nonexistent or trivial may, with a new paradigm,
become the very archetypes of significant scientific achievement.
. Consequently, "the normal-scientific tradition that emerges from a scientific revolution
is not only incompatible but often actually incommensurable with that which has gone
before" (103).
E. The case for cumulative development of science's problems and standards is even harder to
make than the case for the cumulative development of paradigms/theories.
. Standards are neither raised nor do they decline; standards simply change as a result
of the adoption of the new paradigm.
. Paradigms act as maps that chart the direction of problems and methods through
which problems may be solved.
. Because nature is too complex and varied to be explored at random, the map is an
essential guide to the process of normal science.
. In learning a paradigm, the scientist acquires theory, methods, and standards
together, usually in an inextricable mixture.
. Therefore, when paradigms change, there are usually significant shifts in the criteria
determining the legitimacy both of problems and of proposed solutions (109).
F. To the extent that two scientific schools disagree about what is a problem and what a
solution, they will inevitably talk through each other when debating the relative merits of
their respective paradigms (109).
. In the circular argument that results from this conversation, each paradigm will
a. satisfy more or less the criteria that it dictates for itself, and
b. fall short of a few of those dictated by its opponent.
. Since no two paradigms leave all the same problems unsolved, paradigm debates
always involve the question: Which problems is it more significant to have solved?
. In the final analysis, this involves a question of values that lie outside of normal
science altogether—it is this recourse to external criteria that most obviously makes
paradigm debates revolutionary (see B-8/9 above).
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A. During scientific revolutions, scientists see new and different things when looking with
familiar instruments in places they have looked before.
. Familiar objects are seen in a different light and joined by unfamiliar ones as well.
. Scientists see the world of their research-engagement
differently.
. Scientists see new things when looking at old objects.
. In a sense, after a revolution, scientists are responding
to a different world.
B. This difference in view resembles a gestalt shift, a perceptual
transformation—"what were ducks in the scientist's world before the revolution are rabbits
afterward." But caution—there are important differences.
. Something like a paradigm is a prerequisite to perception itself (recall G. H. Mead's
concept of a predisposition, or the dictum it takes a meaning to catch a meaning).
. What people see depends both on what they look at and on what their previous
visual-conceptual experience has taught them to see.
. Individuals know when a gestalt shift has taken place because they are aware of the
shift—they can even manipulate it mentally.
. In a gestalt switch, alternate perceptions are equally "true" (valid, reasonable, real).
. Because there are external standards with respect to which switch of vision can be
demonstrated, conclusions about alternate perceptual possibilities can be drawn.
a. But scientists have no such external standards
b. Scientists have no recourse to a higher authority that determines when a
switch in vision has taken place.
. As a consequence, in the sciences, if perceptual switches accompany paradigm
changes, scientists cannot attest to these changes directly.
. A gestalt switch: "I used to see a planet, but now I see a satellite." (This leaves open
the possibility that the earlier perception was once and may still be correct).
. A paradigm shift: " I used to see a planet, but I was wrong."
. It is true, however, that anomalies and crises "are terminated by a relatively sudden
and unstructured event like the gestalt switch" (122).
C. Why does a shift in view occur?
. Genius? Flashes of intuition? Sure.
. Paradigm-induced gestalt shifts? Perhaps, but see limitations above.
. Because different scientists interpret their observations differently? No.
a. Observations (data) are themselves nearly always different.
b. Because observations are conducted (data collected) within a paradigmatic
framework, the interpretive enterprise can only articulate a paradigm, not
correct it.
. Because of factors embedded in the nature of human perception and retinal
impression? No doubt, but our knowledge is simply not yet advanced enough on this
matter.
. Changes in definitional conventions? No.
. Because the existing paradigm fails to fit. Always.
. Because of a change in the relation between the scientist's manipulations and the
paradigm or between the manipulations and their concrete results? You bet.
D. It is hard to make nature fit a paradigm.
Because paradigm shifts are generally viewed not as revolutions but as additions to scientific
knowledge, and because the history of the field is represented in the new textbooks that
accompany a new paradigm, a scientific revolution seems invisible.
A. Scientific revolutions come about when one paradigm displaces another after a period of
paradigm-testing that occurs
. only after persistent failure to solve a noteworthy puzzle has given rise to crisis.
. as part of the competition between two rival paradigms for the allegiance of the
scientific community.
B. The process of paradigm-testing parallels two popular philosophical theories about the
verification of scientific theories.
. Theory-testing through probabilistic verification.
a. Comparison of the ability of different theories to explain the evidence at hand.
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b. This process is analogous to natural selection: one theory becomes the most
viable among the actual alternatives in a particular historical situation.
. Theory-testing through falsification (Karl Popper).
a. A theory must be rejected when outcomes predicted by the theory are
negative.
b. The role attributed to falsification is similar to the one that Kuhn assigns to
anomalous experiences.
c. Kuhn doubts that falsifying experiences exist.
i. No theory ever solves all the puzzles with which it is confronted at a
given time.
ii. It is the incompleteness and imperfection of the existing data-theory fit
that define the puzzles that characterize normal science.
iii. If any and every failure to fit were ground for theory rejection, all
theories ought to be rejected at all times.
iv. If only severe failure to fit justifies theory rejection, then theory-testing
through falsification would require some criterion of improbability or of
degree of falsification—thereby requiring recourse to 1 above.
C. It makes little sense to suggest that verification is establishing the agreement of fact with
theory.
. All historically significant theories have agreed with the facts, but only more or less.
. It makes better sense to ask which of two competing theories fits the facts better.
. Recall that scientists in paradigmatic disputes tend to talk through each other.
. Competition between paradigms is not the sort of battle that can be resolved by
proofs.
. Since new paradigms are born from old ones, they incorporate much of the
vocabulary and apparatus that the traditional paradigm had previously employed,
though these elements are employed in different ways.
. Moreover, proponents of competing paradigms practice their trade in different worlds
—the two groups see different things (i.e., the facts are differently viewed).
. Like a gestalt switch, verification occurs all at once or not at all (150).
D. Although a generation is sometimes required to effect a paradigm change, scientific
communities have again and again been converted to new paradigms.
. Max Planck: A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and
making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new
generation grow up that is familiar with it.
. But Kuhn argues that Planck's famous remark overstates the case.
a. Neither proof nor error is at issue.
b. The transfer of allegiance from paradigm to paradigm is a conversion
experience that cannot be forced.
c. Proponents of a paradigm devote their lives and careers to the paradigm.
d. Lifelong resistance is not a violation of scientific standards but an index to the
nature of scientific research itself.
e. The source of the resistance is the assurance that
i. the older paradigm will ultimately solve all its problems.
ii. nature can be shoved into the box the paradigm provides.
f. Actually, that same assurance is what makes normal science possible.
g. Some scientists, particularly the older and more experienced ones, may resist
indefinitely, but most can be reached in one way or another.
. Conversions occur not despite the fact that scientists are human but because they are.
. How are scientists converted? How is conversion induced and how resisted?
a. Individual scientists embrace a new paradigm for all sorts of reasons and
usually for several at once.
i. idiosyncracy of autobiography and personality?
ii. nationality or prior reputation of innovator and his teachers?
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b. The focus of these questions should not be on the individual scientist but with
the sort of community that always sooner or later re-forms as a single group
(this will be dealt with in Chapter XIII).
c. The community recognizes that a new paradigm displays a quantitative
precision strikingly better than its older competitor.
i. A claim that a paradigm solves the crisis-provoking problem is rarely
sufficient by itself.
ii. Persuasive arguments can be developed if the new paradigm permits
the prediction of phenomena that had been entirely unsuspected while
the old paradigm prevailed.
d. Rather than a single group conversion, what occurs is an increasing shift in the
distribution of professional allegiances (158).
e. But paradigm debates are not about relative problem-solving ability. Rather
the issue is which paradigm should in the future guide research on problems
many of which neither competitor can yet claim to resolve completely (157).
i. A decision between alternate ways of practicing science is called for.
ii. A decision is based on future promise rather than on past achievement.
iii. A scientist must have faith that the new paradigm will succeed with the
many large problems that confront it.
. There must be a basis for this faith in the candidate chosen.
. Sometimes this faith is based on personal and inarticulate
aesthetic considerations.
iv. This is not to suggest that new paradigms triumph ultimately through
some mystical aesthetic.
f. The new paradigm appeals to the individual's sense of the appropriate or the
aesthetic—the new paradigm is said to be neater, more suitable, simpler, or
more elegant (155).
E. What is the process by which a new candidate for paradigm replaces its predecessor?
. At the start, a new candidate for paradigm may have few supporters (and the
motives of the supporters may be suspect).
. If the supporters are competent, they will
a. improve the paradigm,
b. explore its possibilities,
c. and show what it would be like to belong to the community guided by it.
. For the paradigm destined to win, the number and strength of the persuasive
arguments in its favor will increase.
. As more and more scientists are converted, exploration increases.
. The number of experiments, instruments, articles, and books based on the paradigm
will multiply.
. More scientists, convinced of the new view's fruitfulness, will adopt the new mode of
practicing normal science (until only a few elderly hold-outs will remain).
a. And we cannot say that they are (were) wrong.
b. Perhaps the scientist who continues to resist after the whole profession has
been converted has ipso facto ceased to be a scientist.
b. Does it really help to imagine that there is some one full, objective, true
account of nature?
c. Is the proper measure of scientific achievement the extent to which it brings
us closer to an ultimate goal?
. The analogy that relates the evolution of organisms to the evolution of scientific
ideas "is nearly perfect" (172).
a. The resolution of revolutions is the selection by conflict within the scientific
community of the fittest way to practice future science.
b. The net result of a sequence of such revolutionary selections, separated by
period of normal research, is the wonderfully adapted set of instruments we
call modern scientific knowledge.
c. Successive stages in that developmental process are marked by an increase in
articulation and specialization.
d. The process occurs without benefit of a set goal and without benefit of any
permanent fixed scientific truth.
. What must the world be like in order that man may know it?
Synopsis of each chapter, not in outline form | Frederick Erickson on paradigms in social science
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