Consequences of Revolution:

World Changes, Incommensurability, and Scientific Progress

Introduction to Philosophy ; Phil 11Rasmus Grønfeldt Winther

November 12, 2014

Paradigms as Mapsas a vehicle for scientific theory… [a paradigm] functions by telling the scientist about the entities that nature does and does not contain and about the ways in which those entities behave. That information provides a map whose

details are elucidated by mature scientific research. And since nature is too complex and varied to be explored at random,

that map is as essential as observation and experiment to science’s continuing development. Through the theories

they embody, paradigms prove to be constitutive of the research activity. They are also, however, constitutive of

science in other [“normative”] respects… paradigms provide scientists not only with a map but also with some of the

directions essential for map-making. In learning a paradigm the scientist acquires theory, methods, and

standards together, usually in an inextricable mixture. (Kuhn SSR 109)

Kuhn’s view

Immature Science

Paradigm + Normal Science

Anomalies

Crisis + New Paradigm

Revolution

Thomas Kuhn

Adapted from a ppt by John Oakes, Grossmont College

Gestalt Experiments

Duck or rabbit?

Adapted from a ppt by Janet

Stemwedel, San José

State University.

Adapted from a ppt by Janet

Stemwedel, San José

State University.

Adapted from a ppt by Janet

Stemwedel, San José

State University.

Adapted from a ppt by Janet

Stemwedel, San José

State University.

Adapted from a ppt by Janet

Stemwedel, San José

State University.

Adapted from a ppt by Janet

Stemwedel, San José

State University.

Adapted from a ppt by Janet

Stemwedel, San José

State University.

Gestalt Experiments in Science?

“constrained fall” or a “pendulum”? (SSR 121)

Aristotle vs. Galileo

World Changes?Realist position: “Many readers will.. want to say that what changes with a paradigm is

only the scientist’s interpretation of observations that themselves are fixed once and for all by the nature of the environment

and the perceptual apparatus. …Aristotle and Galileo both saw pendulums, but they

differed in their interpretations of what they both had seen. ” (SSR, 120)Constructivist position: “I am… acutely

aware of the difficulties created by saying that when Aristotle and Galileo looked at swinging

stones, the first saw constrained fall, the second a pendulum. …we must learn to make sense of… though the world does not change

with a change paradigm, the scientist afterward works in a different world. ” (121,

rearranged)

World

Models/Paradigms

Models/Paradigms

World(s?)

Why and whence the fuss?But is sensory experience fixed and neutral?

Are theories simply man-made interpretations of given data? The

epistemological viewpoint that has most often guided Western philosophy for three

centuries dictates an immediate and unequivocal, Yes! In the absence of a

developed alternative, I find it impossible to relinquish entirely that viewpoint. Yet it no

longer functions effectively, and the attempts to make it do so through the introduction of a neutral language of

observations now seem to me hopeless. (SSR, 125)

…language…embodies a host of expectations about nature and fails to

function the moment these expectations are violated. (127)

World

Models/Paradigms

Models/Paradigms

World(s?)

World Changes: Kuhn as Constructivist or

Waffler?1. “…may make us wish to say that, after Copernicus, astronomers lived in a different

world.” (SSR, 117)

2. “…will urge us to say that after discovering oxygen, Lavoisier worked in a different

world” (118)

3. “When [the chemical revolution] was done…the data themselves had changed. That is the last of the senses in which we may want to say that after a revolution

scientists work in a different world.” (134)

Collected by Ian Hacking, p. xxviii

World

Models/Paradigms

Models/Paradigms

World(s?)

World Changes: Possible Integration?

…the network of new regularities accessible to

genius in the world determined jointly by

nature and by the paradigms upon which

Galileo and his contemporaries had been

raised.” (SSR, 125)

World & Paradigm Changes?

IncommensurabilityMathematical sense: the ratio of lengths of two line segments is

irrational – no common measure

Kuhn’s sense: “incommensurability of the pre- and postrevolutionary normal-scientific traditions” include

1.IncStandards “Their standards or their definitions of science are not the same. “ (SSR, 147)

2.IncConcepts “Within the new paradigm, old terms, concepts, and experiments fall into new relationships one with the other.” (148)3.IncWorlds “…the proponents of competing paradigms practice

their trades in different worlds.”(149)

IncConcepts: “Mass”

What is M’s mass as its velocity v increases, approaching light’s speed, c?

M’s mass remains the same:Mv = M0

M’s mass changes thus:Mv = M0

What is the relation between mass and the concept of “energy”?

Only indirect relationships, in which mass figures in equations for potential and kinetic energy.

A direct relationship, famously:EO = M0c2

1. Can we even remotely say that the concept “mass” plays the same role in

Newtonian vs. Einsteinian theory?Kuhn (and Feyerabend) famously argued

“no!”

2. Could Newtonian physics have won over relativity?

Kuhn should be willing to say “yes!”

A dead IncConcept.

IncConcepts: “God”What does “God” mean, under different “paradigms” (religions)?

Krishna(Vishwarupa form,

Singapore)

Buddha(Sarnath, UP, India, 4th

century CE)

(Christian) God (Michelangelo, c.

1512)

IncConcepts: “Species”What does “Species” mean,

under Linnaean and Darwinian paradigms?

Clearly defined species – natural kinds with essences

Species stable

(Limited) ∆: climate, food, environmental change

Varieties and species gradate into one another, and are ultimately all related by descent

Species evolve

∆: natural and sexual selection

A live IncConcept.

Progress across Paradigms?

Why change paradigms? “There must… be a basis, though it need be neither rational nor ultimately correct, for faith in the particular

candidate chosen.” “…there is no single argument that can or should persuade them

all.” (SSR, 157)

What is a scientific community? 1. they “solve problems about the behavior of nature,” 2. they work on “problems of detail,” 3.

“prohibition of appeals to heads of state or to the populace at large in matters scientific,” 4. “…by virtue of their shared training and

experience, [they] are the sole possessors of the rules of the game or of some equivalent basis for unequivocal judgments” (167)

Is there a goal? There is an “evolution from primitive beginnings… but nothing that has been or will be said makes it a process of

evolution toward anything. (171)

Discussion Questions1. Why is nature not the highest epistemological authority?

1. How could science not possibly progress in terms of knowledge and truth?

1. How could scientific change be determined by subjective and arrational factors?

1. Is there no communication across paradigms?

1. Methodologically speaking, has Kuhn been honest to the history of science? (see first sentence of SSR, 1) Is history

itself “fixed and neutral”?