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Kuhn vs. Popper: The Struggle for the Soul of Science (Revolutions in Science)

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Polemics are fun, and this one is no exception. Fuller is an excellent, energetic writer, and he seems to have read everything. If the result is more sizzle than steak, it's still a very interesting view of the divergence between two of the giants of 20th-century philosophy of science. Recommended.

Karl Popper is about my favorite modern philosopher. His view of what science should be like, and the kind of liberating cultural role it should play, is inspiring. Thomas Kuhn, on the other hand, provided a very different, and much less exhilarating, picture of how science does, in fact, operate. In my experience, Kuhn's description is largely accurate, something Popper himself did not deny. If that is so, then this "debate" is between a normative theorist of how science should function (Popper) and an observer/analyst of how science does function (Kuhn). In a debate like that, the queston of "Who's right?" is not destined to lead much of anywhere.

Fuller is critical of Kuhn for being a repesentative of, or even an apologist for, establishment "big science" that tends to operate beyond democratic political controls; Fuller's sympathies are all with Popper's refusal to countenance orthodoxies or establishments of any kind, with science properly serving as an integral part of and support for the rational and critical Open Society. As much as I would like Popperian ideals to guide scientific practice, Fuller's attack on Kuhn seems to me a case of killing the messenger for delivering an unwelcome message about how science actually goes about its business. Science is like it is for reasons that have nothing to do with Thomas Kuhn, and it would be this way even if Kuhn had never been born.

If the problem is the gap between Kuhnian reality and Popperian ideal, then the important question is how to get from the one to the other. Fuller's suggestions about that are pathetically weak. For example, he notes that "Paul Feyerabend advocated the devolution of science funding from nation-states to local communities as the surest way to increase science's capacity for good and lower its capacity for evil." When Fuller refers to the voicing of this fantasy as a "public intervention by a philosopher of science," you don't know whether to laugh or cry. Even if you accept Fuller's ideological commitments, he fails to describe any credible scenario by which modern science, with its vast funding requirements, its national security role, and its industrial entanglements, could conceivably be transformed into the kind of enterprise that he, and Popper, would approve of.

KUHN VS. POPPER: THE STRUGGLE FOR THE SOUL OF SCIENCE

As a working scientist, I approached this little book with interest, for four reasons. First, Thomas Kuhn's perspectives on scientific progress have seemed correct to me since my first reading of his classic "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions", back in the 1960s. Second, the views of Karl Popper that I have come across - with respect to the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen problem of quantum physics (which Popper first formulated) and on the nature of mind (together with John Eccles) - have always struck me as well thought and informative. Third, I have heard about the Kuhn-Popper debates over the years. Finally, my own area of research (nonlinear science) seems to offer a clear example of a Kuhnian revolution.

On the positive side, the author - Steve Fuller, a professor of sociology at the University of Warwick - gives a well informed account of the academic background to the famous 1965 meeting of Kuhn and Popper and he help the reader to understand how the "debates" were (and are?) largely between acolytes of Kuhn and Popper. He also provides a useful glossary of the terms used in philosophical discussions.

Beyond these features, the book is disappointing. Rather than informing the reader about the subject implied by his title, the author devotes the majority of his pages to promoting his own ideas about what scientists should and should not be doing, closing with a chapter curiously entitled: "Is Thomas Kuhn the American Heidegger?'' This is a stretch. Martin Heidegger, after all, was a Nazi, whereas Kuhn, with a doctorate in physics, elected to teach humanities majors about the nature of science. Although Fuller's point is that Kuhn had a "negative responsibility" as an influential person to struggle against the US military-industrial complex and the Vietnam War, I don't buy it. As an active member of the antiwar movement in Madison during the early 1970s, it seems to me that participating in such activities involves decisions that people make for a variety of reasons, most of which would be unknown to a commentator separated by an ocean and a generation.

Alwyn Scott
http://personal.riverusers.com/~rover/

Among the first things one notices when reading Kuhn vs. Popper is Steven Fuller's preoccupation with Kuhn's politics (or lack thereof, which amounts to the same thing). It is true that in Kuhn's system, science is affected by politics and ideology, among many other factors. But to Kuhn, if you want to solve problems in science you try to see the encumbrances for what they are, as obstacles to be overcome. To Fuller on the other hand, politics or ideology (he might frame it "social responsibility") serve to justify science; they are its raison d'ętre. But that is exactly the wrong thing for science, because politicizing it serves to corrupt the process, rendering it hopelessly non-objective and biased. Paradigm struggles become ever less about science and ever more about political special interest advocacy.

Fuller is a sociologist and perhaps that is one reason Kuhn irks him so, for Kuhn also seems to be offering a paradigm challenge to the science of sociology itself. "Normal" (i.e. mainstream) sociologists like Fuller take it for granted that ideology should guide the process. But to Kuhn, sociology is more of a necessary evil; akin to group psychology, and as such it is but one factor out of many in paradigm struggles in science. One such group, the scientific community, plays a crucial role during such periods. In settling scientific debates the final authority is and must be the community of scientists. There is no other--unless one prefers a head of state to render a verdict; or better yet, as in Fuller's fantasy, the sociologist-as-philosopher-of-science should have the final word. This is why it is so important to keep science and politics separate.


Fuller criticizes Kuhn for not taking a stand on political issues, making him into something akin to a "Nazi sympathizer," (in this case a Conservative sympathizer, no doubt), for how else are we to read the analogy to Heidegger? There is little doubt where Fuller's sympathies and priorities lie. In a perverse sort of way I can see Fuller's point. Several notable philosophers and scientists, "intellectuals" of the early to mid-twentieth century like Russell and Einstein, took (left wing) political positions on the pressing issues of their day. Kuhn refused to do so. If I were to guess at his reason I would say he thought it might compromise his philosophical/historical theory on how science develops over time, and turn him into a mere partisan. Fuller characterizes Kuhn's failure to engage in political mud slinging as "cowardice;" I call it being professional and scientific.

As for the book itself; Kuhn vs. Popper has some value in that it gets the reader to think about a very important subject. But that's as far as it goes. Almost from the outset, Fuller plays fast and loose with language. In almost every paragraph, he makes reckless claims, faulty analogies, and erroneous assumptions. Fuller is a loose thinker for whom words have amorphous meanings; the very opposite of thinkers like Kuhn and Popper, however one might judge their respective philosophies.

If one intends to critique an author's work, it helps to first summarize what it says. But Fuller immediately launches into his interpretation before any facts are laid out. For example, on page 13, while ostensibly giving a synopsis of Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Fuller reports that Kuhn "heightens the tension between, on the one hand, the sort of heroic and progressive history that scientists must tell themselves...and, on the other hand, the actual history of science with all its diversions, complexities, and imperfections. Kuhn treats these histories as `separate but equal,'...[and this] would be undermined if scientists had the professional historian's demythologized sense of their history."

But what does all this hyperbole mean? Neither Structure, nor the Postscript to Structure, nor The Road Since Structure say anything like it, and certainly not in that way. There are endless similar examples of Fuller's misinterpretation of Kuhn's theory. Compare the above quote to Kuhn's description of the way science is portrayed in the textbooks:

"From the beginning of the scientific enterprise, a textbook presentation implies scientists have striven for the particular objectives that are embodied in today's paradigms. One by one, in a process often compared to the addition of bricks to a building, scientists have added another fact, concept, law, or theory to the body of information supplied in the contemporary science text...But this is not the way science develops. Many of the puzzles of contemporary normal science did not exist until after the most recent scientific revolution." (Structure, 140)

Steven Fuller's Kuhn versus Popper is a short work published by Icon Books. Fuller is a sociology professor at the University of Warwick in Great Britain.

Fuller uses the contrasting views of Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn as an avenue to discuss broad social and political implications of modern approaches to science. Although I think that the differences between these two thinkers can be overstated (i.e. Kuhn can be seen as a realist and Popper an idealist), it could nonetheless be an interesting approach in the hands of a capable writer. Unfortunately Fuller is not such a writer.

I think Fuller may have some interesting, if unconventional, thoughts in regard to how scientists should interact with broader society, however, they are lost in this self-righteous rant. His comments are rambling, blustering and totally unreferenced. It is evident that Fuller has many axes to grind; he rails against Kuhn, philosophers in general, American academics, etc. His rant against philosophers as being failed scientists supporting failed ideas is particularly ironic coming from a sociologist.

Overall, it is a true stinker- angry and incoherent. If this is indicative of the quality of books published by Icon, I would advise readers to steer clear of them. This text came to me by way of the "bargain bin" and it has left me by way of another "bin".

I felt like this book was rather roundabout with addressing the primary topic of the debate. However, this is such a rare book on this topic that I still appreciate it. The points address by this book range from the Lakatos as separating medium between Popper and Kuhn to discussing Heidegger and Rorty in relation to the debate. This is a fine work.

Fuller's "Kuhn vs. Popper" tells of the authoritarian Kuhn and the libertarian Popper, and their separate ideals of science indicated below:

(1) Thomas Kuhn, in The Structure of Science, related science to the fallibility of scientists, and this made science into a progression of phase changes (Kuhn's paradigm transitions). Science could not be separated from either scientist or from history. The ruling paradigm was an opiate, a habitual application of the one induction that gave its support to an authoritarian class; breaking the paradigm required something special.

(2) Karl Popper's The Logic of Scientific Discovery departed significantly from Kuhn's view. Popper was a deductivist, and he wanted to bring scientific theories to the test of falsification, mere verification of the ever-go-lucky induction would not do. Popper's deduction was meant to eliminate induction by refutation, bringing science closer to an ideal that is independent of the fallibility of scientists. Popper wanted to liberate science from the dictates of the ruling paradigm.

Fuller (page 31) writes: "While neither Kuhn nor Popper would care to deny that a specific paradigm may dominate the understanding of a particular slice of reality at a particular time, they differ over whether it should be treated as a source of stability (Kuhn) or a problem to be overcome (Popper)."

Fuller's book in interesting (worth four stars) because of the contrast made between Kuhn and Popper found in the first half of the book. The confusion comes later, but Fuller (page viii) shows little affection for Kuhn from the get-go, and writes: "The more I have tired to make sense of Kuhn's words and deeds, the more I have come to regard him as an intellectual coward who benefitted from his elite institutional status in what remains the world's dominant society." Fuller tells us that Kuhn won the class struggle, and Fuller's own emotionality betrays his affection for Popper's libertarianism. From about chapter 13 on, Fuller stops comparing Kuhn and Popper directly, and Theodor Adorno and Martin Heidegger are noted. Fuller's views become more political as the reader approaches the end of the book.

Politics can only be confusing. Despite Heidegger's Nazi past, despite the cold war and the Vietnam war, Fuller fails to discredit Kuhn's privileged professional life. Fuller's criticism of Kuhn's silence on moral issues goes nowhere, in my view. My impressions aside, Fuller has made a stronger case for his criticism in "Thomas Kuhn: A Philosophical History for Our Times." Nevertheless, there is no Popperian deduction that I know of that will remove the confusion from Fuller's politics. What Fuller is doing is not deduction, rather it is an exploration of history and it is dialectical. Fuller's dialectical path to truth is closer to Kuhn's history-knows-best-approach than it is to Popper's call-for-empirical-refutation, at least in my opinion.

Yet if Popper's science was so wonderful in Fuller view why then did it fail? The highly irrate Stove, in "Anything Goes", tells us why: Popper fell for Hume's inductive skepticism. Popper, like Fuller, gives to deduction a perfection that cannot be given to any logic independent of the emotions of the logician. Induction cannot be reduces by deduction, the two must stand independent yet one logic cannot eliminate the other. Therefore, there must be something important that is dialectical, something missing from Fuller's account even as Fuller relies much on dialectical logic.

The confident induction and the doubting deduction as emotions are made obvious by a read of Stove, or Fuller. Popper's deduction works to break free of the overbearing induction, while Kuhn's induction works to return us to a blissful automatic polite. It can only be that deduction and induction are one in the same emotion, only coming at us from a different point of view. Schelling's transcendental idealism gives support to this view, as a sensation must come that is found breaking away from itself if only to return later to get a better look of itself. Error recognition is required for induction (as Popper demanded), but it is also needed for deduction (something Popper and Fuller forgot), and it is also needed on something that has to do with emotionality (what Charles S. Peirce calls abduction). The three levels of error recognition returns us to science again, but this cannot be a confused dialectical science that Marx would have us follow. This science would integrate both Kuhn and Popper, something that Fuller's bitterness missed.

Disclosure: My agenda is declared in my profile.

At least two successful books have been written to elucidate modern philosophy using the dramatic device of the confrontation of two powerful minds: The Courtier and the Heretic (Gottfried Leibnitz and Benedictus de Spinoza) and Wittgenstein's Poker (Ludwig Wittgenstein and Karl Popper). Unfortunately, Kuhn vs. Popper does not rise to the level of these books. Steve Fuller, a professor of sociology at the University of Warwick in England, focuses on the sociological and historical context of the major ideas of Kuhn and Popper. The political context of the evolution and application of these ideas dominates most chapters. I feel the chapters which discuss the similarities and differences between the ideas of Popper and Theodor Adorno (coauthor of The Authoritarian Personality) are the best chapters. Fortunately for the philosophy of science, Kuhn's central idea of paradigm shift and Popper's central idea of falsification have measures of validity which do not overlap and therefore cannot be compared and can only be attacked at the edges.

Steve Fuller characterizes excellently the cardinal difference between Kuhn's and Popper's concept of science and research, as well as their vision on life as a whole.
Kuhn was authoritarian and 'historicist' (Things could be no other than they are), while Popper was libertarian and 'criticist' (We can always do better).

Kuhn's basic concept was 'paradigm', which is the 'idea that scientific inquiry is anchored in an exemplar that researchers then use as a model for future investigations.' Kuhn sees a paradigm as an irrefutable theory that becomes an irreversible policy. Therefore, Kuhn's concept is conformist and inherently uncritical. He has a backward look. He is an elitist who sees science as a stabilizing social practice.

Popper's basic concept is 'falsification' through testing, which draws the demarcation line between science and non-science. Science is the standard-bearer for critical rationalism. Scientific inquiry and democratic politics are alternative expressions of an 'open' society. Popper is looking forward because our knowledge is always subject to improvement.

While Popper voiced his political opinions (see 'The Lessons of this Century'), Kuhn remained cowardly silent. More, he schemed behind the back of others (the 'Ravetz' affair) for political reasons.

However, as one reviewer here has already pointed out, Steve Fuller has a dark side, which is also transparent in this book, e.g. 'By failing to associate their ultimate ends with any secular means - be it a church, a political party, or the university - Popper and Adorno effectively crossed the imaginary line from criticism to nihilism.'!

During the hearings of the 'Kitzmiller v. Dover' case, Steve Fuller defends Intelligent Design:
Q. Intelligent Design is committed to introducing supernatural causation into the current science paradigm. Is that correct?
A. (Steve Fuller) That's not exclusively what it does, but it's certainly open to it.
Steven Fuller: 'supernaturalistic means involvment of some kind of intelligence that's not reducible to ordinary natural categories'.
This is by any standards a totally unscientific point of view.

I highly recommend Bryan Magee's work on Popper. Not this book, which, by the way, has no index.

The majority of practising scientists have no interest in the philosophy of science. Most of those who do take an interest think that with the exception of Karl Popper no modern philosopher has anything useful to say about how science is done. If they have heard of Thomas Kuhn at all, or of "paradigm shifts", it is from reading articles in the popular press that give Kuhn and his ideas far more prominence than they get in the scientific literature. It was something of a surprise, therefore, to read in the introduction to this book that "no one doubts that Kuhn has won the debate", and to see the great majority of working scientists who believe in subjecting hypotheses to stringent tests dismissed as "those who still want to uphold 'falsifiability' as science's gold standard".

One of the chapters is entitled "Why Philosophers Get No Respect from Scientists", and Steve Fuller appears to realize that most scientists don't in general care in the slightest what philosophers think, but he fails to answer his own question; on the contrary he reinforces the disrespect by telling us that "even the very greatest scientists, such as Galileo, Newton, Maxwell and Einstein, tend to be treated as no more than passable philosophers", going on to say that Darwin is relegated to polite philosophical silence. Maybe so, but this surely tells us more about the inadequacy of philosophy as a discipline than it does about science.

The greatest shortcoming of this book is that it contains no evidence that the author has ever met any real scientists and discussed their work with them, or even read any of their work. Only two living scientists get mentioned at all, Richard Lewontin and Alan Sokal. The book has nothing of significance to say about Lewontin, and it manages to get hold of the wrong end of the stick about the Sokal Hoax. Describing Sokal absurdly as "a disgruntled US physicist", Fuller seems to imply that he was disgruntled with the state of physics, whereas he was (and is) disgusted with the way physics is perverted by ignorant and pretentious publications by social scientists. Elsewhere he seems to think that intelligent design theory is scientific. His brief mention of "socio-biologists" (Fuller's quotation marks and hyphen) likewise travesties what real sociobiologists think.

Despite all its faults Fuller's book does have some points of interest, certainly for anyone who wants to know about the little closed world where philosophers discuss the nature of science without any actual knowledge of it, or who wants to understand something of the appeal that Kuhn has had for journalists and policy makers. Readers who want to know how science is done, however, will need to look elsewhere.

This is a very good, and somehow hilarious, account of the debate between Popper and Kuhn, with its resemblance to another well-known debate, that between Popper and Wittgenstein. The author of a recent intellectual biography of Kuhn returns to the fray here, with a somewhat acidic critique of Kuhn's influence on the methodology of science. Fuller seems to side with Popper here, up to a point, and exposes the confusing and not always healthy influence of Kuhn's thinking on a whole generation of thinkers who never quite understood who Kuhn was, or the ambiguities of his background.