L10 LB Kuhn and scientific revolutions

Question 1

Why is it naïve to view scientists as choosing theories with an open mind?

Answer 1

Because being a scientist involves signing up to a framework with a pack of assumptions, techniques and exemplars. Kuhn calls this a ‘paradigm’.

Question 2

What is a paradigm? and what does it consist of?

Answer 2

A conceptual framework that structures scientists’ thoughts and work.

It dominates a branch of science for a period of time. Kuhn calls such periods ‘normal science’.

A paradigm consists of assumptions about the world under study. A toolbox for solving problems. It is a style of theorizing.

Question 3

Explain the Kuhn cycle.

Answer 3

1. Normal science
2. model drift: falsification of theories is wrong
3. model crisis: more people start to doubt
4. Model revolution: alternative theory comes up and attracts people
5. Paradigm change
   –> becomes normal science after a while. And then it all happens again.

Question 4

What is the difference between the traditional positivistic view and the revisionist view?

Answer 4

Teleological process of scientific knowledge assumes all science accumulates to where we are now. While the revisionist view is about the developmental progress of scientific knowledge. This view argues that scientific knowledge is historically fixed.

Question 5

What is incommensurability?

Answer 5

The given that there is no common measure. Successive paradigms are incommensurable. There is no common measure, they can’t “talk” to each other.

Question 6

Name and explain the three forms of incommensurability.

Answer 6

1. Semantic: Pertaining to meaning of
   terms
2. Methodological: Pertaining to
   standards of rationality and progress
3. Observational: Pertaining to sense
   experiences

Question 7

What does semantic incommensurability have as a consequence?

Answer 7

Impossibility to translate among paradigms
- No clear logical relations between successive
paradigms
- Due to a meaning shift, different paradigms function
as complete different languages
- E.g. Miasma theory during the middle ages vs modern concept of microorganisms

Question 8

What does methodological incommensurability mean?

Answer 8

• Change of style of reasoning.
• perception of reality: each paradigm has its own rationality (no paradigm-independent standards of scientific progress)
• it’s unclear whether a later paradigm represents progress over an earlier
  –> is quantum physics better than Newtonian physics? this is unclear

Question 9

Explain what Observational incommensurability means

Answer 9

Our paradigm determines what we see. In different paradigms we see different things which rule one another out.

Question 10

What is Gestalt shift?

Answer 10

when someone’s interpretation of their experience changes from one thing to another.