Modified: 2025-01-07 10:41 AM
Thomas Kuhn's book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, proved to be a milestone in the history of science. The ideas he proposed in that volume resonated loudly in the halls of the history of science.
Thomas Kuhn (1922-1996) revolutionized the world's view of how science develops. Prior to his analysis of science in his book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, (1962) science was seen as a slow but constant accumulation of facts and theories. After its publication, the words paradigm, normal science, and revolutionary science, served to describe an entirely new way at looking at science and its progressive development. Kuhn came to his views on science after reading old scientific textbooks. He was struck at how absurd they seemed to him. He soon realized that the authors he was reading were not primitive or stupid. Rather, they had a different worldview than he did. He further realized that as new discoveries and theories replaced the old ones the new ones suppressed the worldview of the old ones. As the New York Times wrote in his obituary on June 19, 1996, (p. B7):
Until then, Professor Kuhn said later, "I'd never read an old document in science." As he looked through Aristotle's Physics and realized how astonishingly unlike Newton's were its concepts of motion and matter, he concluded that Aristotle's physics were not "bad Newton" but simply different.
Kuhn's reconceptualization of science and its development was in itself revolutionary. Very quickly, his ideas gained currency in the social sciences and beyond. Three terms he coined, paradigm, normal science, and revolutionary science, have become part of the vocabulary of science. They are explained below.
Kuhn's central concept was the paradigm, a word he used to express the idea of the implicit structures scientists create in order to understand the world. In the examples in his book, paradigms referred strictly to how scientists conducted their business. Since the publication of the book, the word paradigm has become very popular and its use broadened; so much so that a corpus of work now exists on the issue of the meaning of the word alone! See the link "Brother, Can You Paradigm?" below as a representative commentary on that work.
For Kuhn, the word paradigm described a method of conducting scientific business, and only one paradigm could be in place within a given scientific field. Having two paragdigms in a field was incommensurable. Paradigms led scientists to concrete methods and solutions within their fields, and those were then communicated to students. In that manner, scientists passed their knowledge and methods from one generation to the next. He called this process normal science (see below).
Paradigms were long lasting, but paradigms could eventually lose their explanatory power. Any paradigm is likely to fail eventually because of the world's complexity. Scientists' first remedy to cure an aging paradigm was to patch it, or to modify it so as to explain the new and contradictory data emerging from established scientific methods. If the patches to the paradigm failed, competing paradigms emerged. Those competing paradigms were championed by scientists who believed the old paradigm needed replacing. Kuhn called the competition between paradigms revolutionary science (see below).
Kuhn's genius lies in the fact that was the first to see and describe science as a series of fits and starts instead of a smooth, continual, and progressive path leading from the past to the present. Kuhn came to realize that the path only appeared smooth because after each revolution, or paradigm shift, the victors rewrote scientific history. It was only when he went back and read the old scientific texts that he realized that the science's path was not smooth.
As noted above, Kuhn defined normal science as a period in which the vast majority of scientists within a discipline agreed about their assumptions and methods. During a period of normal science, the work of a scientific community is clear cut. Scientists within that community agree about theories, methods, and data. Kuhn describe their work as "mopping up." That metaphor clearly communicates the task. Scientists who shared a paradigm knew what part of the kitchen floor had been mopped and what remained yet to clean up.
Kuhn used the replacement of classic or Newtonian physics by modern or Einsteinian physics as an example of normal science being replaced by revolutionary science. At the end of the nineteenth century, physics seemed to be close to completing its task. Physicists were about to finish cleaning their kitchen floor. So confident were they that potential graduate students were counseled to seek their careers elsewhere because there would soon be no new physics for them to study and discover. Physicists working under the established paradigm truly believed they were nearly finished with their job. The publications of Einstein in 1905 opened the door to new paradigm in physics, and changed physics completely. What happened next?
In the case of physics, a new paradigm, relativity, arose as practitioners of the old paradigm found it more and more difficult to explain the details observed in sub-atomic interactions. Einstein and many others attempted to provide a new paradigm in which sub-atomic particles' speed or position could be measured but not both, where probability replaced certainty, and where quantum states replaced continuua. In a relatively short time, this modern physics replaced classical physics. McCormmach (1982) even wrote a novel describing a fictional classical physicist's reaction to the revolution. (See URLs below for reviews of book.) How did modern physics replace classical physics? It did so not by converting the classical physicists, but by replacing that old guard with young Turks who supported the new paradigm. Thus is the process in all scientific revolutions, the last supporters of the old paradigm age, attract fewer graduate students, and die. The winners, those scientists supporting the new paradigm attract more graduate students and thus support for their paradigm grows.
More generally, revolutionary science emerges as some scientists perceive that the old paradigm no longer works. Those scientists then begin to promote and support a new paradigm, one in direct competition with the old one. Most of the scientists working under the old paradigm do not or cannot see a reason to switch over and a conflict ensues. Graduate students, interestingly, eventually prove the key to the success or failure of a new, revolutionary paradigm. Akin to a market, proponents of each paradigm attempt to attract new graduate students to their way of viewing the discipline. A revolution occurs when the new paradigm is more successful in enrolling graduate students. After a time, the proponents of the older paradigm can no longer recruit new graduate students. Eventually, they die leaving no intellectual heirs, and the revolution is complete. The new paradigm has replaced the old. New textbooks are written and they explain the field from the point of view of the new paradigm.
Kuhn's description of science explains why paradigmatic struggles remained hidden for so long. In order to see them the old texts have to be found and read. How do Kuhn's ideas apply to psychology ? That topic will be examined next.
Many psychologists believe that psychology has yet to achieve its first paradigm or that psychology is preparadigmatic. Psychology is younger than longer-established disciplines like physics and chemistry. But psychology's subject matter is also is more complex. Physics and chemistry are complex, but neither must deal with entities and concepts that are not physical like psychology must. Having to deal with both physical and virtual (help, here I am looking for a word other than mental or non-physical) entities and concepts is what makes psychology more difficult and preparadigmatic. Consider motivation as an example. It is a proper psychological concept with a long history, but it is likely that the definitive explanation of motivation will not be exclusively physical and will rely on a new, yet unimagined paradigm.
However, some believe that Kuhn did not truly describe science's true nature with his notion of paradigms and paradigm shifts. That is the final topic of this module.
Fuller's Criticism of Kuhn's Ideas
In a recent book, Steve Fuller (2000) criticizes the very existence of Kuhn's paradigms. What is more, Fuller claims that science itself is unlike the science described by Kuhn. To Fuller, science should be more popular and democratic. He criticizes Kuhn's view of science as the product of Kuhn's mentor, James B. Conant, combined with the politics of the postwar age. What Kuhn was describing, Fuller claims, was a very restricted and heirarchical view of science. One that sought to keep science in the hands of a select few.
Fuller's view of science is much broader than most. He hopes to create a more open science by removing experts and gatekeepers, those who, he claims, maintain and change Kuhnian paradigms. He also believes that as long as governments continue to fund science, the results of scientific studies will not be fully reflective of truth. Fuller seeks to create a paradigmless science accessible to all, governed and supported by its practiotioners.
Perhaps, Kuhn is describing science how it exists and Fuller is describing science how he thinks it should be. In any case, the debate started by the thin book published in 1962 continues to roll on and shows no signs of ending soon.