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The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

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I'm not sure if it is still the case, but there was a time when Kuhn's book was _the_ most frequently cited book in scientific literature. With all respect to my fellow reviewers, it might be a tad bit arrogant to dismiss such a book as "puerile."

Before Kuhn, we were taught in school that scientific progress was linear, that it was an unending progression of refinements and developments, with one "truth" leading to the next "truth." Kuhn's insights including pointing out that such a linear progression was mostly a lie. His thesis was that the major developments in science were mostly revolutionary. That some "truths" turned out to be false. Astronomy was revolutionized by Galielo and Copernicus, and man was divested from the center of the universe. Physics was revolutionized by Newton. Biology and Darwin. It didn't hurt that plate tectonics came along shortly after Kuhn published, and Kuhn looked like his model was predictive, too.

Part of Kuhn's impact, I have to admit, was a result of the time which the book was first published. In the middle and late 1960's, questioning authority was the heart of any undergraduate's thinking, and Kuhn's ideas were read by some as a license to question all authority.

Perhaps as a consequence, Kuhn's model has been carried by other writers beyond all reason, with everyone from sociologists to New Age fuzzies usurping his terminology, making "paradigm shift" a nearly instant cliche. But his influence has gone far beyond those who want to mis-apply his ideas to everything from post-modern dance to sociobiology. Uniformitarianism has been bloodied, perhaps permanently. By geologists, evolutionists, archaeologists and more; the influence has been pervasive and real. Stephen Jay Gould may or may not subscribe to "Structure," but he has sure demolished uniformitarianism in evolution.

I disagree with those who regard "Structure" as "the most important" anything. But it unquestionably has been stunningly influential, and any serious student of science or philosphy, I believe, will be reading this book a hundred years from now. And apart from its influence and impact, the book still reads well almost 40 years on. It's fun and, if you enjoy seeing the world stood on its ear, you'll like Kuhn's approach.

Thomas Kuhn performed a signal service for historiography of science by studying how new ideas and new ways of thinking displace the old. He invented the term 'paradigm shift' to describe what happens when 'normal science' runs into 'anomalies' and enters a 'crisis', which in turn leads to a 'scientific revolution'. Nobody had heard of such things before, so Kuhn had a scoop. He sketched some historical examples in iconoclastic style; the result is this short book, first published forty years ago and still wowing Cultural Studies students today.

Much of what Kuhn the historian of science says here is sensible and well taken. It has certainly been influential, perhaps in ways the author never intended, and should be read for that reason. But there are odd omissions. The greatest paradigm shift in physics since Newton - the adoption of fully-fledged quantum mechanics after 1925 - finds no significant place in this study. Eminent physicists, including Einstein, and even Schrodinger, one of its founders, regarded the new paradigm with deep distaste on aesthetic and philosophical grounds. Yet the methodology was adopted universally almost at once. What sociological factors, what structures of power and patronage brought this about? We are not told.

It is when Kuhn puts on his philosopher-of-science hat and tells us about the 'incommensurability of paradigms' that we should question what he means, and more especially what some people have read into it. The idea is that Archimedes or Aristotle, encapsulated in their ancient world-view, would have been unable to see what Newton was getting at in his 'Principia'; and likewise Newton if you gave him a copy of Dirac's 'Quantum Mechanics'. This has been held to have implications for epistemology, viz: it is a mistake to think of the evolution of science (or any rational endeavor) as 'progress' in the sense of bringing us closer to an accurate picture of the world. Kuhn's position can be likened to Darwinian evolution: progress *from*, yes; progress *towards*, no. There is room here for fancy footwork. But the finer points are lost on some who simply cheer it as a poke in the eye for rationality.

If an epochal break can be found anywhere in the history of science, it is in the transition from the Aristotelian to the modern world-view which took place in early modern times. Since then nothing remotely like it has happened. The training of physicists still begins with a detailed study of Newtonian mechanics, which for many purposes, from shooting pool to spaceflight, provides an entirely adequate description. An important part of learning relativity or quantum mechanics lies in understanding how they fit in with Newtonian physics - in fact, precisely how the paradigms are commensurable where their domains overlap. The same people at different times use the paradigm of Newton and the paradigms of Einstein and Bohr/Heisenberg. They don't use the paradigm of Aristotle or the New Age paradigm because - interesting though these are to the historian or the social scientist - they don't work; they are not fruitful for puzzle-solving, Kuhn would say.

A process of generalization of paradigms has been characteristic of physics for the past few centuries, and this seems true of mature sciences generally. At the fundamental level a paradigm that has proven really useful is hardly ever scrapped (Kuhn cites two cases from physics since Newton: the recurring controversy over the nature of light - both sides seem to have won that one - and the caloric theory of heat). Instead, the old paradigm is subsumed into a more developed theory with a broader domain of application, yielding in some sense deeper insights. Kuhn the physicist knew this, of course, though some of his readers don't; so he had to defend the unusual position that e.g. Newtonian mechanics is fundamentally incompatible with Einsteinian mechanics, even though one is a limiting case of the other (Kuhn disputed this) and both are used successfully all the time. This was the only way he could maintain that they are 'incommensurable'.

Where does this leave the incommensurability of paradigms? The concept can be interpreted according to taste along a spectrum: at one end, true but trivial; at the other end, deep but almost certainly false. Indeed - and I'm going to be shockingly naive here - you wouldn't be reading this otherwise; you'd be chipping flints. For what it's worth, my opinion is that Newton, far from 'living in a different world', would be perfectly at home with modern physics and raring to go, given a couple of years to get up to speed; Archimedes might take a little longer, while Aristotle would be a leading light at the Sorbonne.

More problematic even than incommensurability of paradigms in Kuhn's work are occasional gnomic statements such as the following:

"There is, I think, no theory-independent way to reconstruct phrases like 'really there'; the notion of a match between the ontology of a theory and its 'real' counterpart in nature now seems to me illusive in principle"

and

"Scientific knowledge, *like language*, is intrinsically the common property of a group *or else nothing at all*" (my italics).

Taken with the thesis of the book (though Kuhn denied it) remarks like these open the door to all the baggage of so-called radical relativism. Now the baggage is in the hall and halfway up the stairs, as Gross & Levitt, Sokal & Bricmont and others have pointed out. Some of us wish it was out back in the hen-house.

At the heart of modern physics there is indeed an incommensurability, in at least one of Kuhn's senses. It is between the two fundamental theories, general relativity and quantum mechanics. That doesn't stop people from using both paradigms, but it's a great puzzle: no one knows how to fit them together correctly. When we find out (strictly speaking I should say 'if'), it will be as a result of a paradigm that hasn't shifted since the seventeenth century: theoretical structure expressed in the language of mathematics, built on and feeding back into an empirical base. And there will be real, at present unimagined consequences.

You may say that's naive or begs the ontological question. But I say it's the best we've got. No amount of self-regarding talk about hermeneutics and postmodern science - though it comes with a reference list as long as your arm to all the stars of critical 'theory' - will advance our understanding one iota. Whatever the world is, it isn't like that, and Kuhn never really imagined it was.

In spite of the impression I may have given, the book is worth reading and it isn't difficult (some background knowledge of actual science would help). Read it for yourself; don't believe everything people say about it.

Note added: Some readers think that Kuhn was describing a process of successive approximation to truth, incorporating a smart new account of convergence. The point cannot be made too strongly that he was doing nothing of the sort. I recommend reading page 206 from which the remarks about 'really there' were quoted. You don't have to be a relativist and anti-realist to be a Kuhnian, but it helps.

Kuhn, doesn't need any more appreciation (at least not from me), and there's more than enough in the other reviews, so what I'll try to provide is a brief synopsis of how the book outlines Kuhn's radical theory.In many ways, the theory is still radical, because people still want to believe that science marks progress, and moves unerringly from one theory to the next, better one. What Kuhn did, was decimate the idea that the 'progress' of science was a steady movement towards the truth, and the never articulated preconception that the "truth" itself (or if you prefer the better theory) was self-evident and would be recognized on sight.Illustrated with hilarious examples of the manner in which the most scientific of all sciences, Physics, has floundered about over the centuries, the book makes its point very forcefully. There is no science disembodied from scientists, there is no scientific theory that is not profoundly influenced by the scientific and social milieu it finds itself in. Kuhn isn't saying science is completely divorced from "reality" or "truth", the Structure of Scientific Revolutions just looks very closely at major and minor scientific "advances" of hte previous centuries and finds no evidence that suggest the dynamic of scientific progress is smooth.

Kuhn was a physicist, but gave that up to work in History of Science. This book is rather compact for a text that would so radically alter its entire discipline (and many others besides), but that is probably what gives it the broad appeal it has. It's not a "difficult" book, nor is it unduly academic. It's certainly not going to be a cake-walk, Kuhn's conception is sufficiently strange to make demands on the reader (as is his language). But the entire exercise is well worth the effort. When you get through the 150 odd pages of this text, you wonder why it wasn't said before. Then you wonder whether everything we so firmly believe stands on as shaky ground. Like the man said, you must read this book.

This book frequently pops up on a "Top 100" or "Best Science Book" or some other list for a reason: Mr. Kuhn was the first person to step back and look at the complex way in which science and scientific study have advanced over the course of humanity and try to put those observations forth in a logical manner. He succeeded brilliantly.

Mr. Kuhn's main point is that there are two phases of scientific discovery, "normal science" which is built on established principals, rounding out gaps in existing theories until the theories begin to unravel, at which point we have entered a period which will require a "paradigm shift". Mr. Kuhn takes the reader through multiple historical examples, the shifts in scientific thought brought about by Copernicus, Newton, Lavoisier and Einstein. His references are relevant and his thoughts are clearly put forth. The historical anecdotes are very entertaining and educational and do a solid job of reinforcing his point.

I must admit I was a bit concerned during the first chapter, it was a bit tough to make it through, but did a very good job of laying the groundwork and allowing a glimpse of the author's thought process. The second chapter, in which the author begins to define "normal science", immediately put me to rest as the author dove straight into making his point and proving his argument. The final three chapters pertaining to the Invisibility, Resolution and Progress of revolutions should be required reading for anyone who works in the sciences, and is immensely valuable to anyone working in any field. I have been surprised that there haven't been more straight on business interpretations of Kuhn's work (although there has obviously been much unreferenced piracy), as the spread of scientific thought is a very apt metaphor for the spread of business theory and product adoption.

This is a very good book and I highly recommend it, regardless of what field you work in, be it science, business or otherwise.

A true classic of twentieth century literature, this wonderful little book, which argues for the contingency of scientific knowledge, deserves space on the bookshelf next to The Wealth of Nations (identifying the contingency of economic wellbeing and value), Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature (causal scepticism), The Origin of Species (the contingency of biological development) and Contingency, Irony and Solidarity (the contingency of language) - along with those perennially confusing continental stalwarts Freddie Nietzsche and Ludwig Wittgenstein, as representing the fundamental underpinnings of modern Relativist thought.

Thanks to the Chomskies, Dawkinses and Sokals of this world, who have cunningly bound perfectly sensible Cognitive and Ethical Relativism to silly Post-Structuralism, proper Relativism has become a dirty word these days.

It may be unfashionable but it's also powerful, and if you want to understand it, and its power, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions - as short and beautifully written a classic of philosophy as you could possibly ask for - is as good a place as any to start.

Following publication of "Structure", Kuhn had a famous public debate with Karl Popper over what counts as science and the way in which science develops over time. Popper had, in The Logic of Scientific Discovery, made the invaluable observation that "verification" as a standard for science is too high, since as a matter of logic an argument based on induction ("since the sun has risen on every day in recorded history, therefore it will rise tomorrow") can never be proven true. The sun rising is a very good example: for all our folksy expectations, current cosmology predicts that there will be a point at some time in the distant future when the sun will explode, and therefore will not rise tomorrow.

In lieu of verification as the scientific gold standard, Popper asserted (seemingly plausibly) that valid scientific theory could be assessed by the lack of any falsifying evidence among the data. The requirement for scientific statements to be "falsifiable" is a useful contribution to the debate: To be of any use, a scientific theory must narrow down from the list of all possible outcomes a set of predicted ones, and rule the rest out. Statements which cannot be falsified by any conceivable evidence don't do that, so fail at science's fundamental task.

Thomas Kuhn's insight was to offer a historian's perspective, and to note that, while that might be theory, that's simply not what science does in practice. Scientific theories are absolutely never thrown out the moment contradictory evidence is observed: the dial is tapped, the experiment re-run, and "numerous articulations and ad hoc modifications of their theory" are devised to eliminate any apparent conflict. Indeed, when the data won't do what it's meant to, sometimes it is the question which is rejected as being irrelevant, and not the answer predicted by the theory.

All this activity takes place inside what Kuhn describes (somewhat inconsistently) as a "paradigm" - a "particular coherent tradition of scientific research". The paradigm governs not only the theory but the education, instrumentation, rules and standards of scientific practice, and is the basis on which the scientific community decides which kinds of questions are and are not relevant to the development of scientific research. A paradigm claims exclusivity over the adjudication of its own subject matter, and one only has authority to pronounce on a scientific problem once one has been fully inducted: evolutionary biologists will not take seriously the biological assertions of fundamentalist Christians, for example. Fundamentalist Christians who take biology exams will fail, and thereby will never be able to authoritatively comment on biological matters.

Paradigms are generally a useful thing for the jobbing scientist, since to her they provide a pre-agreed framework - what Dan Dennett would describe as a "crane" - on which additional scientific research can be undertaken without having, literally, to re-invent the wheel. Kuhn characterises this sort of "normal scientist" as being involved in "puzzle solving" in exactly the sense that one solves a crossword puzzle. You have a framework of rules for how to solve the puzzle; you have problems (the blank spaces on the puzzle) and you empirically obtained evidence (clues) which you manipulate using the rules to produce predictions (or answers), and each newly discovered answer then acts as an additional clue to solve the remaining problems.

Superficially, this all sounds fine, but there are brutal, jagged corals just below the water's surface: Once inside a paradigm it informs your view of the world so thoroughly it is not possible to conduct research outside it. To solve a crossword puzzle, there must first be *some* pre-determined rules of engagement (the same puzzle can be solved, differently, with different sets of rules: a "cryptic" crossword yields different answers for the same boxes, and perhaps even the same clues, to a "quick" crossword. But to solve it one needs to use one or the other). Unlike a crossword, Mother Nature doesn't come with a label saying "cryptic" or "quick". So how do we know which paradigm to use? Can the truth or falsity of the paradigm to be judged, other than in terms of the paradigm itself?

Kuhn says no. This is an immensely powerful idea. Not only does it undermine the certitude many people have about their own ways of life, it seems to opens the door to all the whacky alternatives, with no objective means of choosing between them. So can we really not choose between Radiotherapy and Healing Crystals?

That this might be the case terrifies a lot of people, especially scientists, and Kuhn gets a lot of the blame for this state of unease. Post-Modernism: It's all Kuhn's fault.

But this is surely to shoot the messenger: Kuhn's great contribution is not to say that healing crystals are in (he says nothing of the sort) but to say that the sacred and immutable link between science and truth is out, and we owe it to ourselves to keep an open mind about whatever we believe. After all, the history of science (which is what Kuhn started out writing about) is a long history of frequent revolution. Either all the theories scientists have ever believed up to the current day are baloney, always were, never really counted as science and we're just lucky to be around when the human race has finally got it right - which, to put it mildly, is wishful thinking - or the revolutionary history of science, which no-one disputes, tends to back up what Kuhn is saying.

Science does evolve, through the great algorithm of human discourse, and the dominating theories through time will tend to be the ones which most of us are persuaded work the best for us (whether we're right or not is really beside the point). What persuades in Tehran may differ from what persuades in Texas. All Thomas Kuhn cautions against is either side taking its own position as a given.

His enterprise is therefore fundamentally democratic - placing epistemological legitimacy in the hands of the entire community, as contingent and random as it may be from time to time, and not a self-selecting, self perpetuating elite.

One thing economic theory tells us is that concentrating economic control in a small part of the population (as in a monopoly) generally works out worse for everyone except the monopolist. There's no reason to suppose that concentrating intellectual authority should be any different.

In the Western Hemisphere - outside the Grateful Dead tour circuit, at any rate - intellectual authority mostly resides with established science, but it has to work - literally - to earn our respect.

The anti-Kuhn brigade like Richard Dawkins may not like that sort of accountability but, not being a scientist, I do.

Olly Buxton

In this book, Thomas Kuhn manages to convey fundamental concepts that will take you a step closer to understanding what science really is.

Popular wisdom will tell you that science is a cumulative process by which scientists improve progressively on previous knowledge. In contrast, Kuhn will tell you that although during "normal" periods that might very well be the case, there are singular periods during which a crisis will force a whole community of scientists not only to re-invent their methods and tools, but even to rethink their interpretation of previous long standing assumptions, pushing them to discard what had previously been accepted theories in favor of new ones. Kuhn gives the name of "Scientific Revolutions" to these singular periods. Throughout the text of the book he offers several examples of scientific revolutions, most of them from the physical sciences.

Although Kuhn's ideas are conceptually simple, his involved writing style makes this book a tough reading. It almost gave me the impression that he didn't use the services of an editor at all. Part of the semantic entanglement in his original writing comes from his abuse of the word 'paradigm'. In the postscript, which was written several years after the first printing of the book, he admits to this fault and offers some remarks that help clarify most of the main points in his thesis.

You may or may not agree with all of Kuhn's ideas. Nevertheless, the widespread influence that this book has had in the philosophy of science makes it a must-read for anyone who wishes to be called a scientist.

The negative reviews of this classic that are posted here unfortunately come from people who have missed the core proposition of Kuhn's book, that science is not the pricess of discovery of true facts about the natural world, that instead it is the process of the social construction of facts about the natural world, facts whose relevance changes as science goes through successive revolutions. The insight he provides on the way that science rewrites history from a present-centered perspective to make science appear progressive have been missed by these readers.

The cynical reader may need more help before she is convinced that science may not be about approaching truth about the natural world. A couple of other books that may help the inquisitive reader to gain more insight into this fascinating subject are: Feyerabend, Against Method; Kleck, Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact; Harry Collins, The Golem; and Harry Collines, Changing Order.

Enjoy the exploration!

This is the book in which Thomas Kuhn introduced his famous paradigm theory: scientists of the same discipline have a set of theories and practices in common, the so-called paradigm. In the normal course of scientific research, they do not question this paradigm, but apply it to solve new problems. This changes when the paradigm is found to fail consistently when it is applied to explain certain observations. This can lead to the appearance of a new paradigm, which eventually replaces the old one.

The book is very well-documented. Kuhn amply uses examples from the history of science to illustrate his point, and you will not find a single statement that is not accompanied by the necessary arguments.

Books like this are not easy to read, but this book is worth the effort. First of all, because Kuhn has an eloquent style. Second, because you do not need any prior knowledge in order to understand the text (although it might help). Third, and most importantly, because it gives a good picture of how science develops, how scientists behave.

Of course no single picture of science can ever be perfect. Every philosophy of science highlights certain aspects of the scientific process, and leaves other aspects almost untouched. This book is no exception. However, if you read just one original work in this field, this is probably the best choice.

In educating scientists for the work of "normal science" it is apparent that the solubility of problems within the received structures of thought must be the centerpiece of that education. In other words, 'this is the kind of problem that is important, this is how to resolve the problem, this is what that resolution should look like.' Throughout the course of their education and subsequent work, many scientists may give little or no thought to what this means or to where it leads. This is not generally problematic, as the work of normal science is that of fine-tuning specialized niches, and a larger perspective may not be helpful. As a young physicist finishing his doctorate at Harvard, Kuhn was less interested in embracing the norm than in analyzing its structure. Kuhn's interest in these received structures of thought (to which he affixes the label "paradigms"), in their histories, psychologies, products, and limits, resulted in this classic analysis of how the natural sciences work. Many believe that this is the finest analysis ever produced examining the necessary advantages of these structures and how and why paradigms of scientific thought inevitably become intractable and inadequate.
As a philosopher and historian of science, Kuhn's perspective encompasses most of the historically great ideas of the natural sciences, from the astronomy of Ptolemy (one of science's earliest universal paradigms) to the problems of vibrating strings (interesting in that this was published in 1962). As a result, the book is broad in scope and extremely well supported. In it's examination of the history and philosophy of natural science and the psychology and methodology of the scientific community, this is one of those few books which is rightly called important.
Individuals who hold to a simplistic perspective as to what science is may take offense with aspects of Kuhn's thesis, but they need not, this volume is certainly not "anti-science". While the work of science inevitably leads to the modification or replacement of paradigms, these changes are generally of a pragmatic nature, i.e., we do not know that they resemble truth more closely, only that they seem to 'work' better. In the end we are left with important questions that may not be answerable through the work of science: "what must the world be like in order that man may know it?" Such problems are philosophical in nature and do not malign or censor the work of science, a work in progress to which this book brings an enlarged perspective. Kuhn's points are made economically but please don't rush to oversimplify them (as some obviously have), there is significant subtlety here as well.
Highly recommended.

This book has become a classic in philosophy of science. Kuhn's description of how science works was considered by some critics to be overly relativistic, by others as irresponsible and even dangerous (e.g. Steve Fuller). Whatever one thinks of it, Kuhn took away the aura of infallibility, and described science as made by scientists - it is a human activity, and since humans are prone to error, so is science. Moreover, what is considered to be "science" cannot be established a priori or once and for all, but depends fully on the social context in which science is done.

If you know nothing about philosophy of science, this book is not an easy read, especially because in this book Kuhn describes his ideas often in a rather abstract manner. Nonetheless, for a philosophy book, it is surprisingly accessible. Kuhn attempts to avoid philosophical jargon as much as possible. Moreover, if you have a fairly basic understanding of what Kuhn is trying to say (and you can look this up in almost every encyclopedia), the book is rather easy to follow.

Kuhn is often contrasted with Karl Popper - another pioneer of 20th century philosophy of science. If you want to know what philosophy of science is about, read this book by Kuhn and afterwards Popper's classic "The Logic of Scientific Discovery". If you know the difference between Kuhn and Popper, you'll be able to find your way around in contemporary philosophy of science.

If after having read Kuhn you still don't have enough, buy Paul Hoyningen-Huene's book "Reconstructing Scientific Revolutions: Thomas S. Kuhn's Philosophy of Science" (Univ. of Chicago Press 1993), also available from Amazon.com.