STRUCTURE OF SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTIONS

Thomas Kuhn's 'Structure of Scientific Revolutions'



Thomas Kuhn's 'Structure of Scientific Revolutions'

Introduction

We think of science as a rational, empirical alternative to religion and spirituality. The scientific method is a common denominator for all the different fields in science. Science is the basis for technology, which has improved the standard of living for billions of people. In the developed world, we pride ourselves on public policy being guided by science rather than superstition or tradition. Kuhn sees the linear model of scientific advancement as flawed. It does not reflect the reality of science history. Science history, like art, political/economic, technology, and religious history, characterized by occasional bursts of radical change (i.e. revolutions) surrounded by long periods of stability. Unlike these other fields, however, which all past civilizations possessed in some form, science is much newer and for over four centuries monopolized by Europeans(Restivo, 1983).

Critiques and Analysis

Kuhn gives a detailed account of how scientific revolutions happen. To understand revolutions, you need to first understand “normal science,” which is what Kuhn describes as everyday science. Normal science is what most scientists do most of the time. It consists of puzzle solving, of determination of significant fact, of matching facts with theory, and articulation of theory. Examples include determining structural formulas, gravities, the speed of light, and arriving at quantitative laws. Normal science is guided by “paradigms,” constellations of beliefs, values, and techniques that shared by members of a scientific community. A paradigm accepted by all members of a scientific discipline is a prerequisite for normal scientific work. Fundamental disagreements are characteristics of early stages of scientific development, which go away with the adoption of a shared paradigm. An example is the field of optics before and after Isaac Newton. Before Newton, “though the field's practitioners were scientists, the net result of their activity had been something less than science” (p. 13). Because there was no shared paradigm, everyone writing on optics had to articulate the foundations of his viewpoint. After Newton, scientists accepted his theory of light, and normal scientific optical work began (Huene, 1993). A contemporary example of a pre-scientific field is clinical psychology. Psychodynamic therapies differ on fundamentals with cognitive, behavioral, family, sociological, and biological therapies. There is no shared paradigm uniting those who practice these different styles of therapies. As a result, clinical psychology has not made the progress characteristic of mature scientific disciplines like biology, chemistry, or physics.

Newton's particle theory of light eventually replaced with newer theories. The first theory to replace it was the wave theory, which derived from the optical writings of Young and Fresnel in the early nineteenth century. This then replaced in the twentieth century with the contemporary theory of light as photons, with some characteristics of waves and some of the particles. This theory derived from the work of Planck, Einstein and others. Each of these changes in theory was an example of a scientific revolution, a topic to which Kuhn devotes most of his book (Sokal, ...