Kuhn's Paradigms

Source(s):

Kuhn's Incommensurability: Paradigms and Progress

The traditional view (of scientific realists) of progress is that scientists just know more as time goes on. Time causes knowledge to accumulate. However, scientists make mistakes, and once they are realised, some building blocks need to be broken, but nothing substantial, thanks to collective effort. So, science is a steady accumulation of knowledge.

To Kuhn, scientists who follow a paradigm are said to be doing good science and those who are not, bad science . If this is true, during a scientific revolution, the very idea that constitutes as good science, changes.

- Note: This idea claims that good science is relative to the context of time and space (the stage of scientific thought in a particular time period, at a particular place).

If you say that science shows progress, then how can you determine which paradigm is better. The current paradigm obviously better represents the paradigm it replaced. but those of older paradigms might argue that their paradigm was still better. It is only that a majority consensus forces a paradigm into dominance one way or another, which progresses science.

Kuhn introduces the notion of incommensurability; there is a lack of comparability using a neutral standard between any two paradigms. To Kuhn, you cannot claim which paradigm is objectively better. Hence, Kuhn's notion of progress lies between revolutions (mainly phases 2-4).

Key Criticisms

Many argue that scientists can still agree upon which paradigm is more successful from one paradigm to another by determining which one is objectively better than the one that is replaced. With this way of thinking, then, you would be led to believe that if Aristotle was still around, he would have succumbed to Galileo.

See Handling Incommensurability for more information.

Kuhn's Phases of Science: Paradigm Work to Paradigm Revolution

Every science starts at the pre-paradigmatic phase and never returns. The other phases can occur many times and can switch between phases 2-4 (normal science/crisis/revolution)

1. Pre-paradigmatic phase

Every science starts here. There is no set of agreed-upon theories, methods, tools, or concepts. Hence, scientists will do very different things, and it will be very hard to communicate between them because they have very different notions of vocabulary. Pre-paradigmatic science does not really look like science, nor is it productive, because scientists cannot build upon other scientists' results, and so everyone is constantly starting from scratch.

It is good, according to Kuhn, when, for any reason whatsoever, one set of theories becomes dominant (e.g. due to popularity or politics), which leads other scientists to follow within this set of established paradigms, leading onto the next phase: normal science.

2. Normal Science

Although scientists are critical about new ideas and cutting-edge theories, they are not critical about their own theories. Every field has an insurmountable amount of theories, concepts, ideas, and tools that scientists take for granted when working within it (e.g. standard Latin dictionaries are good tools for translation, bodies consist of cells which contain DNA, etc.), which Kuhn denotes as a paradigm . This causes scientists to form a particular viewpoint (or lens) which combines individual and social characteristics (e.g. maxims, biases, values, traits) of the world from which they are granted the ability to do science, specifically, normal science . It is said to be normal science when the paradigm is sound and scientists in the discipline are confident about it. Kuhn goes further to point out that scientists do not even entertain the idea of these assumptions being false (because this is not serious work). Kuhn points out that this is a good thing, because we take so much for granted, we are able to get anything done.

- Note: So according to Kuhn, scientists are not critical because they do not criticise their paradigm, and usually it is left to the new generations to change paradigms because scientists tend to stick to and defend their paradigms, and dismiss outliers that do not fit into their paradigms until circumstances (many categorically persistent anomalies) lead to the next phase: crisis. It is more disturbing to consider that the opportunity for scientists to detach from this particular lens would invoke a detachment from the very paradigm upon which the science is based. I will distinguish a lens from a paradigm in that a lens applies the human traits also points out, that differ from individual to individual).

3. Crisis

An anomaly is a problem within the paradigm that scientists at present are unable to solve but is not substantial enough on its own accord to dethrone the paradigm. It is only when a significant accumulation of anomalies is reached that the paradigm is called into question in the scientific community.

Scientists begin to lose confidence in their paradigm and begin to think 'outside of the box' or, in Kuhn's terms, 'outside of the paradigm.'

There are two ways to resolve a crisis:

1. Resolve the anomalies using the tools and theories and concepts that fit within the current paradigm's set.

2. A new paradigm emerges (new theories, concepts, methods), that essentially is a superset in that it explains all of the theories of the paradigm it replaces, as well as accounting for all of the anomalies that coerced the existing paradigm into crisis. This leads to the next phase of science: revolution.

4. Scientific Revolution

To Kuhn, a revolution has occurred when scientists have come to accept a new paradigm in place of an existing one. These scientific revolutions help progress science, according to Kuhn. But Kuhn argues that these revolutions are exceptions.