Sunday, October 15, 2006
At least you got an ology ...
This is the text of a presentation that I cobbled together from various bits of the net for my issues and methods in political and social research class last friday. It deals with epistomology which is not a subject practiced in the union bar. At least not conventionaly...
This presentation is going to be about Thomas Kuhn’s influential work The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. We are going to look at
Why the work is relevant to people who are not studying Newtonian physics?
What are the key contentions of the book? And then we look in more detail into the 13 chapters of the work which is probably not a good thing to do on Friday 13th.
Finally we shall look at some of the criticism of Kuhn’s work.
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is a work from the academic discipline of the philosophy of science. I doubt very much that we have many people here who are studying the philosophy of science so I think it is important to ask the question what relevance is a work on the philosophy of science written over 40 years ago to modern students of the social sciences
I would argue that the relevance is not in the scientific work that are the examples of Kuhn’s study for instance Newton’s Principia or Franklin’s Electricity, personally I would find it difficult to fit a reference to either of those into an essay on globalisation, but rather in the value of its epistemological approach. That is to say the important thing is how Kuhn views the nature of knowledge.
So what does he say?
The central concept of the work is the paradigm. Essentially a paradigm is the intellectual framework that defines a scientific discipline during a particular period of time. Kuhn argues that science when in one paradigm is “normal science” The other key term is a paradigm shift which is the movement from one paradigm to another.
Paradigm shifts tend to be most dramatic in sciences that appear to be stable and mature, as in physics at the end of the 19th century. At that time, physics seemed to be a discipline filling in the last few details of a largely worked-out system. In 1900, Lord Kelvin famously stated, "There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement." Five years later a technical examiner at the Swiss patent office who went by the name of, Albert Einstein published his paper on special relativity, which challenged the very simple set of rules laid down by Newtonian mechanics, which had been used to describe force and motion for over three hundred years. In this case, the new paradigm reduces the old to a special case
In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Kuhn wrote that "Successive transition from one paradigm to another via revolution is the usual developmental pattern of mature science." (p.12) Kuhn's idea was itself revolutionary in its time, as it caused a major change in the way that academics talk about science. Thus, it caused or was itself part of a "paradigm shift" in the history and sociology of science.
The book starts with Kuhn formulating some assumptions that lay the foundation for subsequent discussion and by briefly outlining the key contentions of the book
A scientific community cannot practice its trade, he argues, without some set of received beliefs (p. 4). These beliefs form the foundation of the "educational initiation that prepares and licenses the student for professional practice" while the nature of the "rigorous and rigid" preparation helps ensure that the received beliefs exert a "deep hold" on the student's mind. For instance this course will give us assumptions as to what is proper research in the social sciences
With this background we can then conduct what Kuhn calls normal science which operates within the given paradigm of the time. However, "normal science often suppresses fundamental novelties because they are necessarily subversive of its basic commitments" (5). Kuhn also defines research as "a strenuous and devoted attempt to force nature into the conceptual boxes supplied by professional education" (5). Kuhn does not argue however that the conceptual boxes are so strong as to prevent the emergence of anomalies to the existing paradigm. As they "subvert the existing tradition of scientific practice" (6). These shifts are what Kuhn describes as scientific revolutions—"the tradition-shattering complements to the tradition-bound activity of normal science" (6).
The book then goes on to look in more detail at how paradigms are created, and how do scientific revolutions take place? He asserts that inquiry begins with a random collection of "mere facts" During these early stages of inquiry; different researchers confronting the same phenomena describe and interpret them in different ways (17). He argues that in time, these descriptions and interpretations entirely disappear. As a preparadigmatic school (movement) appears. Such a school often emphasizes a special part of the collection of facts and often, these schools vie for pre-eminence.
From the competition of preparadigmatic schools, one paradigm emerges to quote Kuhn "To be accepted as a paradigm, a theory must seem better than its competitors, but it need not, and in fact never does, explain all the facts with which it can be confronted" (17-18) As a paradigm grows in strength and in the number of advocates, the preparadigmatic schools (or the previous paradigm) fade. As Kuhn argues "When an individual or group first produces a synthesis able to attract most of the next generation's practitioners, the older schools gradually disappear" (18). But what you may ask happens to those who still hold to the views of the old paradigm? Kuhn states those with "older views . . . are simply read out of the profession and their work is subsequently ignored. If they do not accommodate their work to the new paradigm, they are doomed to isolation or must attach themselves to some other group"
The new paradigm transforms a group into a profession or, at least, a discipline (19). And from this follow the trappings of academia,
1) The formation of specialized journals.
2) The foundation of professional societies (or specialized groups within societies—SIGs).
3) The fact that members of the group need no longer build their field anew—first principles, justification of concepts, questions, and methods. Such endeavours are left to the theorist or to writer of textbooks.
4) promulgation of scholarly articles intended for and "addressed only to professional colleagues, [those] whose knowledge of a shared paradigm can be assumed and who prove to be the only ones able to read the papers addressed to them" (20)—preaching to the converted.
Anyone doing global politics will be thinking this is just like international political economy.
So now that the new paradigm has arrived what happens now?
Or to ask the question another way. If a paradigm consists of basic and incontrovertible assumptions about the nature of the discipline, what questions are left to ask?
Kuhn argues when paradigms first appear, paradigms are limited in scope and in precision. Apparently paradigms gain their status because they are more successful than their competitors in solving a few problems that the group of practitioners has come to recognize as acute" (23). But more successful according to Kuhn does not mean completely successful with a single problem or notably successful with any large number (23). Initially, a paradigm offers the promise of success.
Personally I think that this doesn’t sound all that revolutionary and rather undermines his argument. Kuhn argues however that the Normal science which follows the paradigm shift consists in the actualization of that promise of success made. This is achieved by
1) extending the knowledge of those facts that the paradigm displays as particularly revealing,
2) increasing the extent of the match between those facts and the paradigm's predictions,
3) And further articulation of the paradigm itself.
In other words, there is a good deal of mopping-up to be done. Mop-up operations are what engage most scientists throughout their careers. Mopping-up is apparently what normal science is all about! This paradigm-based research (25) is "an attempt to force nature into the preformed and relatively inflexible box that the paradigm supplies" (24). Kuhn then asserts a range of conditions that occur during normal science which to me seem to strike at the basis of scientific enquiry. For instance:
i. no effort made to call forth new sorts of phenomena.
ii. no effort to discover anomalies.
iii. when anomalies pop up, they are usually discarded or ignored.
iv. anomalies usually not even noticed due to (tunnel vision/one track mind).
Apparently there is also no effort to invent new theory (and no tolerance for those who try) as "Normal-scientific research is directed to the articulation of those phenomena and theories that the paradigm already supplies" (24).
Kuhn acknowledges these as restrictions, born from confidence in a paradigm, and turn out to be essential to the development of science. By focusing attention on a small range of relatively esoteric problems, the paradigm forces scientists to investigate some part of nature in a detail and depth that would otherwise be unimaginable" (24).
. and, when the paradigm ceases to function properly, scientists begin to behave differently and the nature of their research problems changes.
Though if I’m not sure how we are to get to that position if considering his earlier contentions. There is
v. no effort made to call forth new sorts of phenomena.
vi. no effort to discover anomalies.
Well basically he says you find them anyway and they lead to
1) Discovery—novelty of fact.
2) Invention—novelty of theory
The paradigm changes that result from the invention of these new theories brought about by the failure of existing theory to solve the problems defined by that theory. This failure is acknowledged as a crisis by the scientific community.
Normal science does and must continually strive to bring theory and fact into closer agreement. The recognition and acknowledgment of anomalies result in crises that are a necessary precondition for the emergence of novel theories and for paradigm change.
In responding to these crises, scientists generally do not renounce the paradigm that has led them into crisis. All crises begin with the blurring of a paradigm and the consequent loosening of the rules for normal research.
All crises close in one of three ways.
1. Normal science proves able to handle the crisis-provoking problem and all returns to "normal."
2. The problem resists and is labelled, but it is perceived as resulting from the field's failure to possess the necessary tools with which to solve it, and so scientists set it aside for a future generation with more developed tools.
3. A new candidate for paradigm emerges, and a battle over its acceptance ensues (84)
We should also look at some of the criticisms of Kuhn’s work: 2 in particular standout to me.
Firstly Margaret Masterman, a computer scientist working in computational linguistics, produced a critique of Kuhn's definition of "paradigm" in which she noted that Kuhn had used the word in at least 21 subtly different ways. While she said she generally agreed with Kuhn's argument, she claimed that this ambiguity contributed to misunderstandings on the part of philosophically-inclined critics of his book, thereby undermining his argument's effectiveness. Kuhn responded to Masterman's criticisms in his postscript to the third edition, using the expression "disciplinary matrix" to refer to a set of concepts, values, techniques, and methodologies instead of the term "paradigm."
Secondly in his 1958 work, The Uses of Argument, Steven Toulmin argued that a more realistic picture of science than that presented in SSR would admit the fact that revisions in science take place much more frequently, and are much less dramatic than can be explained by the model of revolution/normal science. In Toulmin's view, such revisions occur quite often during periods of what Kuhn would call "normal science." In order for Kuhn to explain such revisions in terms of the non-paradigmatic puzzle solutions of normal science, he would need to delineate what is perhaps an implausibly sharp distinction between paradigmatic and non-paradigmatic science.
In conclusion
We have seen the birth and life of a paradigm. We have also sought to probe the reasons for its demise. Personally I do not find his theory entirely convincing Kuhn argues on p34 To desert the paradigm is to cease practicing the science it defines. Yet I would contend that the nature of scientific enquiry means that to unquestioningly accept the paradigm is to cease practicing science. As I see the nature of science is to question the present academic discipline which following the following the view of Steven Toulmin I would contend is a much more frequent occurrence than the Kuhn model suggests. But then we are in a research methods class which in the Kuhnian view will indoctrinate us with methodological paradigm of modern social science so we just might need a paradigm shift. ¶ 6:36 pm
This presentation is going to be about Thomas Kuhn’s influential work The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. We are going to look at
Why the work is relevant to people who are not studying Newtonian physics?
What are the key contentions of the book? And then we look in more detail into the 13 chapters of the work which is probably not a good thing to do on Friday 13th.
Finally we shall look at some of the criticism of Kuhn’s work.
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is a work from the academic discipline of the philosophy of science. I doubt very much that we have many people here who are studying the philosophy of science so I think it is important to ask the question what relevance is a work on the philosophy of science written over 40 years ago to modern students of the social sciences
I would argue that the relevance is not in the scientific work that are the examples of Kuhn’s study for instance Newton’s Principia or Franklin’s Electricity, personally I would find it difficult to fit a reference to either of those into an essay on globalisation, but rather in the value of its epistemological approach. That is to say the important thing is how Kuhn views the nature of knowledge.
So what does he say?
The central concept of the work is the paradigm. Essentially a paradigm is the intellectual framework that defines a scientific discipline during a particular period of time. Kuhn argues that science when in one paradigm is “normal science” The other key term is a paradigm shift which is the movement from one paradigm to another.
Paradigm shifts tend to be most dramatic in sciences that appear to be stable and mature, as in physics at the end of the 19th century. At that time, physics seemed to be a discipline filling in the last few details of a largely worked-out system. In 1900, Lord Kelvin famously stated, "There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement." Five years later a technical examiner at the Swiss patent office who went by the name of, Albert Einstein published his paper on special relativity, which challenged the very simple set of rules laid down by Newtonian mechanics, which had been used to describe force and motion for over three hundred years. In this case, the new paradigm reduces the old to a special case
In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Kuhn wrote that "Successive transition from one paradigm to another via revolution is the usual developmental pattern of mature science." (p.12) Kuhn's idea was itself revolutionary in its time, as it caused a major change in the way that academics talk about science. Thus, it caused or was itself part of a "paradigm shift" in the history and sociology of science.
The book starts with Kuhn formulating some assumptions that lay the foundation for subsequent discussion and by briefly outlining the key contentions of the book
A scientific community cannot practice its trade, he argues, without some set of received beliefs (p. 4). These beliefs form the foundation of the "educational initiation that prepares and licenses the student for professional practice" while the nature of the "rigorous and rigid" preparation helps ensure that the received beliefs exert a "deep hold" on the student's mind. For instance this course will give us assumptions as to what is proper research in the social sciences
With this background we can then conduct what Kuhn calls normal science which operates within the given paradigm of the time. However, "normal science often suppresses fundamental novelties because they are necessarily subversive of its basic commitments" (5). Kuhn also defines research as "a strenuous and devoted attempt to force nature into the conceptual boxes supplied by professional education" (5). Kuhn does not argue however that the conceptual boxes are so strong as to prevent the emergence of anomalies to the existing paradigm. As they "subvert the existing tradition of scientific practice" (6). These shifts are what Kuhn describes as scientific revolutions—"the tradition-shattering complements to the tradition-bound activity of normal science" (6).
The book then goes on to look in more detail at how paradigms are created, and how do scientific revolutions take place? He asserts that inquiry begins with a random collection of "mere facts" During these early stages of inquiry; different researchers confronting the same phenomena describe and interpret them in different ways (17). He argues that in time, these descriptions and interpretations entirely disappear. As a preparadigmatic school (movement) appears. Such a school often emphasizes a special part of the collection of facts and often, these schools vie for pre-eminence.
From the competition of preparadigmatic schools, one paradigm emerges to quote Kuhn "To be accepted as a paradigm, a theory must seem better than its competitors, but it need not, and in fact never does, explain all the facts with which it can be confronted" (17-18) As a paradigm grows in strength and in the number of advocates, the preparadigmatic schools (or the previous paradigm) fade. As Kuhn argues "When an individual or group first produces a synthesis able to attract most of the next generation's practitioners, the older schools gradually disappear" (18). But what you may ask happens to those who still hold to the views of the old paradigm? Kuhn states those with "older views . . . are simply read out of the profession and their work is subsequently ignored. If they do not accommodate their work to the new paradigm, they are doomed to isolation or must attach themselves to some other group"
The new paradigm transforms a group into a profession or, at least, a discipline (19). And from this follow the trappings of academia,
1) The formation of specialized journals.
2) The foundation of professional societies (or specialized groups within societies—SIGs).
3) The fact that members of the group need no longer build their field anew—first principles, justification of concepts, questions, and methods. Such endeavours are left to the theorist or to writer of textbooks.
4) promulgation of scholarly articles intended for and "addressed only to professional colleagues, [those] whose knowledge of a shared paradigm can be assumed and who prove to be the only ones able to read the papers addressed to them" (20)—preaching to the converted.
Anyone doing global politics will be thinking this is just like international political economy.
So now that the new paradigm has arrived what happens now?
Or to ask the question another way. If a paradigm consists of basic and incontrovertible assumptions about the nature of the discipline, what questions are left to ask?
Kuhn argues when paradigms first appear, paradigms are limited in scope and in precision. Apparently paradigms gain their status because they are more successful than their competitors in solving a few problems that the group of practitioners has come to recognize as acute" (23). But more successful according to Kuhn does not mean completely successful with a single problem or notably successful with any large number (23). Initially, a paradigm offers the promise of success.
Personally I think that this doesn’t sound all that revolutionary and rather undermines his argument. Kuhn argues however that the Normal science which follows the paradigm shift consists in the actualization of that promise of success made. This is achieved by
1) extending the knowledge of those facts that the paradigm displays as particularly revealing,
2) increasing the extent of the match between those facts and the paradigm's predictions,
3) And further articulation of the paradigm itself.
In other words, there is a good deal of mopping-up to be done. Mop-up operations are what engage most scientists throughout their careers. Mopping-up is apparently what normal science is all about! This paradigm-based research (25) is "an attempt to force nature into the preformed and relatively inflexible box that the paradigm supplies" (24). Kuhn then asserts a range of conditions that occur during normal science which to me seem to strike at the basis of scientific enquiry. For instance:
i. no effort made to call forth new sorts of phenomena.
ii. no effort to discover anomalies.
iii. when anomalies pop up, they are usually discarded or ignored.
iv. anomalies usually not even noticed due to (tunnel vision/one track mind).
Apparently there is also no effort to invent new theory (and no tolerance for those who try) as "Normal-scientific research is directed to the articulation of those phenomena and theories that the paradigm already supplies" (24).
Kuhn acknowledges these as restrictions, born from confidence in a paradigm, and turn out to be essential to the development of science. By focusing attention on a small range of relatively esoteric problems, the paradigm forces scientists to investigate some part of nature in a detail and depth that would otherwise be unimaginable" (24).
. and, when the paradigm ceases to function properly, scientists begin to behave differently and the nature of their research problems changes.
Though if I’m not sure how we are to get to that position if considering his earlier contentions. There is
v. no effort made to call forth new sorts of phenomena.
vi. no effort to discover anomalies.
Well basically he says you find them anyway and they lead to
1) Discovery—novelty of fact.
2) Invention—novelty of theory
The paradigm changes that result from the invention of these new theories brought about by the failure of existing theory to solve the problems defined by that theory. This failure is acknowledged as a crisis by the scientific community.
Normal science does and must continually strive to bring theory and fact into closer agreement. The recognition and acknowledgment of anomalies result in crises that are a necessary precondition for the emergence of novel theories and for paradigm change.
In responding to these crises, scientists generally do not renounce the paradigm that has led them into crisis. All crises begin with the blurring of a paradigm and the consequent loosening of the rules for normal research.
All crises close in one of three ways.
1. Normal science proves able to handle the crisis-provoking problem and all returns to "normal."
2. The problem resists and is labelled, but it is perceived as resulting from the field's failure to possess the necessary tools with which to solve it, and so scientists set it aside for a future generation with more developed tools.
3. A new candidate for paradigm emerges, and a battle over its acceptance ensues (84)
We should also look at some of the criticisms of Kuhn’s work: 2 in particular standout to me.
Firstly Margaret Masterman, a computer scientist working in computational linguistics, produced a critique of Kuhn's definition of "paradigm" in which she noted that Kuhn had used the word in at least 21 subtly different ways. While she said she generally agreed with Kuhn's argument, she claimed that this ambiguity contributed to misunderstandings on the part of philosophically-inclined critics of his book, thereby undermining his argument's effectiveness. Kuhn responded to Masterman's criticisms in his postscript to the third edition, using the expression "disciplinary matrix" to refer to a set of concepts, values, techniques, and methodologies instead of the term "paradigm."
Secondly in his 1958 work, The Uses of Argument, Steven Toulmin argued that a more realistic picture of science than that presented in SSR would admit the fact that revisions in science take place much more frequently, and are much less dramatic than can be explained by the model of revolution/normal science. In Toulmin's view, such revisions occur quite often during periods of what Kuhn would call "normal science." In order for Kuhn to explain such revisions in terms of the non-paradigmatic puzzle solutions of normal science, he would need to delineate what is perhaps an implausibly sharp distinction between paradigmatic and non-paradigmatic science.
In conclusion
We have seen the birth and life of a paradigm. We have also sought to probe the reasons for its demise. Personally I do not find his theory entirely convincing Kuhn argues on p34 To desert the paradigm is to cease practicing the science it defines. Yet I would contend that the nature of scientific enquiry means that to unquestioningly accept the paradigm is to cease practicing science. As I see the nature of science is to question the present academic discipline which following the following the view of Steven Toulmin I would contend is a much more frequent occurrence than the Kuhn model suggests. But then we are in a research methods class which in the Kuhnian view will indoctrinate us with methodological paradigm of modern social science so we just might need a paradigm shift. ¶ 6:36 pm
