Thomas S Khun

Key ideas:

Revolution-best way to think of Kuhn
Popper saw some sense of progress, each idea building upon the last
No progress, just changes as a result of imperfect nature of knowledge
New idea replaces old idea due to problems of old idea
Sciences progress is just changing from an old paradigm to a new one
Sideways shift, not moving forward or backward
New paradigms are only made when the old ones exhibit problems, polarisation between supporters for each paradigm occurs, each group uses its own paradigms rules to defend their case with the ideas of each paradigm only appealing to those who step into the circle of beliefs of the paradigm, and they then fight each other for existence until one wins
Called revolutions because to those in the affected field it radically changes the way they understand their topic
Uses political analogy
Not all new discoveries need to be revolutionary
Scientists only reinvent concepts during the pre-paradigm stage when preparing a new paradigm to takeover
New paradigms direct response to the crises of a failure of the old ones

Key Quotes:

Pages (66-69):

“The changes in which these discoveries were implicated were all destructive as well as constructive”

“Gain was achieved only by discarding some previously standard beliefs or procedures and, simultaneously, by replacing those components of the previous paradigm with others”

“Discoveries are not, however the only sources of these destructive-constructive paradigm changes”

“How can theories like these arise from normal science, an activity even less directed to their pursuit than to that of discoveries”

“It should surprise no one that a similar but more profound awareness is prerequisite to all acceptable changes of theory”

“Newtons new theory of light and colour originated in the discovery that none of the existing pre-paradigm theories would account for the length of the spectrum”

“One can appropriately describe the fields affected by it as in a state of growing crisis”

“It demands large scale paradigm destruction and major shifts in the problems and techniques of normal science”

“Failure of existing rules is the prelude to a search for new ones”

“But to be admirably successful is never, for a scientific theory, to be completely successful”

“A discrepancy corrected in one place was likely to show up in another”

“Technical breakdown would still remain the core of the crisis”

“External factors like those cited above are principally significant in determining the timing of breakdown”

Pages (74-76):

“In each case a novel theory emerged only after a pronounced failure in the normal problem solving activity”

“That breakdown and the proliferation of theories that is its sign occurred no more than a decade or two before the new theories enunciation”

“Practice of normal science had given every reason to consider them solved or all but solved”

“The solution to each of them had been at least partially anticipated during a period when there was no crisis in the corresponding science; and in the absence of crisis, those anticipations had been ignored”

“Available observational tests, as we shall see more clearly below provided no basis for a choice between them”

“The recognised crisis that had been responsible for innovation in the first place”

“History of science indicates that, particularly in the early developmental stages of a new paradigm, it is not very difficult to invent such alternates”

“So long as the tools a paradigm supplies continue to prove capable of the problems it defines”

“The significance of crises is the indication they provide that an occasion for retooling has arrived”

Pages (92-98):

“What are scientific revolutions, and what is their function in scientific development”

“Scientific revolutions are here taken to be those non-cumulative developmental episodes in which an older paradigm is replaced in whole or in part by an incompatible new one”

“Scientific revolutions are inaugurated by a growing sense, again often restricted to a narrow subdivision of the scientific community, that an existing paradigm has ceased to function adequately in the exploration of an aspect of nature to which that paradigm itself had previously led the way”

“In both political and scientific development the sense of malfunction that can lead to crisis is prerequisite to revolution”

“Scientific revolutions..... need seem revolutionary only to those whose paradigms are affected by them”

“Their success therefore necessitates the partial relinquishment of one set of institutions in favour of another”

“As the crisis deepens, many of these individuals commit themselves to some concrete proposal for the reconstruction of society in a new institutional framework”

“Revolutionary conflict must finally resort to the techniques of mass persuasion”

“The role depends upon their being partially extra-political or extra-institutional events”

“Between competing paradigms proves to be a choice between incompatible modes of community life”

“Characteristics of normal science, for these depend in part upon a particular paradigm, and that paradigm is at issue”

“Each group uses its own paradigm to argue in that paradigms defence”

“We must shortly examine the nature of the differences that separate the proponents of a traditional paradigm from their revolutionary successors”

“Are there intrinsic reasons to why the assimilation of either a new sort of phenomenon or a new scientific theory must demand the rejection of an older paradigm”

“They do not derive from the logical structure of scientific knowledge”

“The new theory might be simply a higher level theory than those known before, one that linked together a whole group of lower level theories without substantially changing any”

“In the evolution of science new knowledge would replace ignorance rather than replace knowledge of another and incompatible sort”

“All new sorts of phenomena has in fact demanded the destruction of a prior paradigm and a consequent conflict”

“Normal research, which is cumulative, owes its success to the ability of scientists”

“There must be conflict between the paradigm that discloses anomaly and the one that later renders the anomaly law like”

“The successful new theory must somewhere permit predictions that are different from those derived from its predecessor”

Chapter 13 – Progress through Revolutions

“Science is reserved for fields that do progress in obvious ways”

“We must learn to recognise as causes what have ordinarily been taken to be effects”

“Does a field make progress because it is a science or because it makes progress?”

“Throughout the pre-paradigm period when there is a multiplicity of competing schools, evidence of progress, except within schools, is very hard to find”

“During periods of revolution when the fundamental tenets of a field are once more at issue, doubts are repeatedly expressed about the very possibility of continued progress if one or another of the opposed paradigms is adopted”

“There are no other professional communities in which individual creative work is so exclusively addressed to and evaluated by other members of the profession”

“A scientific community is an immensely efficient instrument for solving the problem”

“The outcome of revolution must be progress”

“That admission would inevitably raise the question wether truth in the sciences can be one”

“We must see a paradigm change as progress”

“Incompatible rules for doing science cannot coexist except during revolutions”

“Does it really help to imagine that there is some one full, objective, true account of nature and that proper measure of scientific achievement is the extent to which it brings us closer to that ultimate goal”

“Somewhere in this maze for example, must lie the problem of induction”

“It helps us recognise that the conceptual transposition here recommended is very close to one that the west undertook just a century ago”

“the resolution of revolution is the selection by conflict within the scientific community of the fittest way to practice future science”

“We are no closer than we were at the start to knowing what these must be

	Created by Winbaj08 over 10 years ago

VCE Philosophy (Knowledge, belief and science: Hume, Popper, Khun) Note on Thomas S Khun, created by Winbaj08 on 03/09/2013.

Thomas S Khun