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PARADIGMS_EVALUATED

                                                      January 23, 2014
   

From some remarks I made at reddit about Thomas Kuhn's
ideas about "paradigms" in science:
   
   Kuhn argued that there are some severe logical problems
   with saying that a new paradigm is accepted because of
   greater explanatory power because paradigm-shifts tend
   to involve changes in the very understanding of what
   needs to be explained and the meanings of the terms used
   in the explanations.
      
   It's no where near as cut-and-dried as gee, we have    
   three outstanding problems, but if we just re-think
   everything in terms of that new paradigm we can      
   cross-off two of them and only be left with one.      
   
               
A longer set of remarks, made somewhere else:

   Kuhn looked at the history of the way scientific ideas
   have developed and tried to write down some
   generalizations of the way science actually works.

   He started with the point that scientific training
   isn't so much about memorizing theory but rather
   working through example problems. He makes the point
   that it isn't even that clear what something like
   "F=ma" is at first glance-- we call it one of Newton's
   "laws", but it some ways it's more like a definition.
   Doing example problems using it (and variants, like
   "W=mg") are what gets the meaning of it across to the
   student of classical physics.

   Kuhn starts out thinking of these example problems as
   "paradigms" (following the jargon for the standard
   examples they use to teach latin conjugation), and
   thereafter he uses the word "paradigm" to mean the kind
   of understanding embodied in these examples-- for Kuhn,
   a "paradigm" is a style of thinking, an intellectual
   framework. This has since become very common usage: a
   "new paradigm" is a new way of understanding.

   Kuhn observes that in reading older scientific
   literature, it can be extremely difficult to follow
   exactly what they meant: the same words may be in use,
   but they may very well have meant different things (and
   further, they *cared* about different things, they were
   worried about different problems). Kuhn called this a
   difficulty with "incommensurate" terminology, a barrier
   to understanding the way people thought on the other
   side of a transition which he calls a "scientific
   revolution".

   Kuhn's picture then of the scientific process is
   periods of "normal science" interrupted by periods of
   "revolution".

   This differs somewhat from the view of scientific
   progress that was common around the time Kuhn was
   getting started-- "the march of science" was a steady
   advance, and a scientist was supposed to be someone
   making rational, logical decisions based on evidence.
   The idea that scientists are human beings that can get
   stuck on an ideology bothered some people then (and
   still bothers some people now).

   Kuhn was adopted for awhile by the anti-science "post-
   modern" crowd that wanted take a shot at those guys on
   the other side of campus that get all the funding:
   science considered as nothing but a collection of
   narratives without any claim to being in touch with
   The Truth.

   Kuhn himself wanted nothing to do with these people (as
   he put it, "I am not a Kuhnian!") and myself, I think
   reading Kuhn as just some sort of take-down of science
   is completely wrong: it's an attempt at recognizing
   what actually happens (or happened-- actually, I
   suspect science has changed a lot since Kuhn: a lot of
   people have read him, and the idea of "models" is very
   prevalent now-- rigid ideology is far less common).

   It is no disgrace to science if it is a social process
   where different people cover for each other's
   weaknesses to do something greater than any might do on
   their own...

   Would that we could all learn the same trick.

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