Week 6: Philosophy of science development

Question 1

What is normal science?

As defined by Thomas Kuhn

Answer 1

Normal science refers to ordinary daily activities performed by scientists, when not undergoing revolutionary change.

Question 2

What is a paradigm?

Answer 2

1. A set of fundamental theoretical assumptions, accepted by all members of the scientific community.
2. A set of exemplars, or scientific problems, which have been solved using the theoretical assumptions, and which appear in the textbooks of the discipline in question.

A paradigm is an entire scientific outlook, composed of shared assumptions, values, and beliefs, making a whole of the scientific community and normal science possible to happen.

Question 3

What are the stages of Kuhn’s Theory of scientific revolution?

Answer 3

1. Stage of normal science: scientists gradually define the paradigm and fine-tune it by filling it with details.
2. Abnormalities of the paradigm start to emerge, such as phenomena that do not match the paradigm and that the paradigm cannot find an explanation for.
3. Abnormalities accumulate over time and the paraddigm starts losing its accountability.
4. Scientific revolution: new scientific ideas are made available to replace the old paradigm, until a new paradigm is chosen or defined.

Question 4

What was Thomas Kuhn’s position?

Answer 4

Thomas Kuhn disagreed with the logical empiricists. He focused on what the historical development of science actually looks like, instead of the difference between science and pseudoscience. His focus was on descriptive instead of prescriptive, he did not focus on what makes science science, and what makes pseudoscience pseudoscience.

Question 5

What were Kuhn’s two philosophical arguments?

Answer 5

1. Competing paradigms are incommensurable with one another. Two paradigms have no common standards of measurement to be judged with, and as a result the proponents of different paradigms fail to make complete contact with each other’s viewpoints.
2. All data is theory-laden, meaning that depending on the data and the perspective of the scientist, data will be perceived in different ways. Theoretical assumptions contaminate data and neutral data does not truly exist.