Philosophy of Science 7 - Scientific Revolutions

This video details Thomas Kuhn's philosophy of science, which proposes a cyclical model of scientific development from normal science, to crisis, to revolution, then back to normal science. The important concepts of paradigms and paradigm shifts are explained.

[XiaosChannel]

certainly there are differences between religious conversion and paradigm shift in science. There's still lots and lots of catholics, but very few geocentrists.

[Ansatz]

24:15 "This of course contrasts with Popper and the Falsificationists. According to Kuhn we don't immediately throw out theories in the face of anomalies."

That's not a real contrast. Falsificationists will also continue to use a theory in the face of anomalies when there is no better theory available. The defining feature of a Falsificationist scientists is that she is _searching_ for anomalies. What she may do in reaction to finding them is irrelevant. This raises the question of how Kuhn thought that Falsificationists scientists would react to anomalies as opposed to Kuhnian scientists. Did he imagine book burning?

Kuhn's cycle of science makes perfect sense from a Falsificationist perspective. Surely it's clear that Kuhn's scientific progress comes from the accumulation of recalcitrant anomalies. It is these anomalies that drive science forward into its next cycle, and that's exactly what Falsificationism has always been saying. Not only do anomalies lead into the next paradigm shift, but they also tell us where we can expect the current paradigm to be unreliable, so even if we never get to a paradigm shift we can still take value from a catalogue of recalcitrant anomalies.

Naturally Kuhn approaches the philosophy of science from a historical perspective, and that is always going to include records of people failing to advance science. Whenever Kuhn talks about scientists being dogmatic, surely that's a case of failure. One cannot find anomalies by dogmatically believing that anomalies are impossible. If such a person encounters an anomalies she will dismiss them as results of her own mistakes and therefore fail to publish them, since that's what dogma demands. Until she breaks free of her dogma she'll never move us closer to the next paradigm shift, or even add an entry into the catalogue of recalcitrant anomalies.

[grimreaper]

"This of course contrasts with Popper and the Falsificationists. According to Kuhn we don't immediately throw out theories in the face of anomalies." That is naive falsificationism, I'm disappointed you actually say this because it's a misrepresentation and strawman of Popper, this what he actually says:






"We must clearly distinguish between falsifiability and falsification. We
have introduced falsifiability solely as a criterion for the empirical
character of a system of statements. As to falsification, special rules
must be introduced which will determine under what conditions a
system is to be regarded as falsified.
We say that a theory is falsified only if we have accepted basic statements
which contradict it (cf. section 11, rule 2). This condition is
necessary, but not sufficient; for we have seen that non-reproducible
single occurrences are of no significance to science. Thus a few stray
basic statements contradicting a theory will hardly induce us to reject it
as falsified. We shall take it as falsified only if we discover a reproducible
effect which refutes the theory. In other words, we only accept the
falsification if a low-level empirical hypothesis which describes such
an effect is proposed and corroborated.
This kind of hypothesis may
be called a falsifying hypothesis.1 The requirement that the falsifying hypothesis must be empirical, and so falsifiable, only means that it
must stand in a certain logical relationship to possible basic statements;
thus this requirement only concerns the logical form of the hypothesis.
The rider that the hypothesis should be corroborated refers to tests
which it ought to have passed—tests which confront it with accepted
basic statements.*1
Thus the basic statements play two different rôles. On the one
hand, we have used the system of all logically possible basic statements
in order to obtain with its help the logical characterization for which
we were looking—that of the form of empirical statements. On the
other hand, the accepted basic statements are the basis for the corroboration
of hypotheses. If accepted basic statements contradict a
theory, then we take them as providing sufficient grounds for its
falsification only if they corroborate a falsifying hypothesis at the
same time.
" - Logic of Scientific Discovery








"Kuhn practically accepted my real views on the revolutionary
character of the evolution of science. He deviates from my
views only in upholding what I described above as 'fideism'; for he
asserts 'that a scientist must believe [my italics] in his system before
he will trust it as a guide to fruitful investigations of the unknown'}1
But Kuhn follows me fairly closely when he continues: 'But the scientist pays a price for his commitment. . . . A single observation
incompatible with his theory [may demonstrate]14 that he has been
employing the wrong theory all along. His conceptual scheme must
then be abandoned and replaced.'15
This is, obviously, 'falsificationism'; in fact, something like a
'methodological stereotype of falsification', to cite Kuhn's allusion
to me in his later book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
(1962, p. 77). But in his earlier book on Copernicus, Kuhn continues:
'That, in outline, is the logical structure of a scientific
revolution. A conceptual scheme . . . finally leads to results that are
incompatible with observation . . It is a useful outline, because the
incompatibility of theory and observation is the ultimate source of
every revolution in the sciences.'
This 'useful outline' of the logic of a scientific revolution is not
only falsificationist; it is a far more simplistic stereotype of falsificationism
than anything I myself ever said in my writings, my lectures,
or my seminars; in fact, I have always been in full agreement
with the following more critical remark that Kuhn adds: 'But historically,
the process of revolution is never [I should say: 'hardly
ever'], and could not possibly [?Rutherford! See above] be, so
simple as the logical outline indicates. As we have already begun
to discover, observation is never absolutely incompatible with
a [theory].'" - Realism and the Aim of Science