Thomas Kuhn's Book - The

Thomas Kuhn's book - the structure of scientific revolutions 3rd edition Thomas Kuhn's very influential book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, proposes a model or a pattern for the evolution of science throughout the ages. Kuhn makes use of specific concepts and of a careful structuring of the book in thirteen chapters that treat, in turn, of the basic aspects of the progress of science in time.

First of all, Kuhn (1996) introduces the notion of "normal science," that is, according to him, the science that bases its research on previous research which is recognized as valid by a scientific community. (p.10) It is the structure of normal science is what the book proposes to investigate. Furthermore, Kuhn (1996) argues that the most salient aspect of scientific evolution in time is the fact that science does not progress through leaps or through unrelated sets of investigations.

On the contrary, scientific research is always conducted under a paradigm, or, to put it differently, all research is based on previous scientific data. The scientific paradigm can be defined as a certain common pattern in scientific research, or a certain set of accepted world views that are held as true for a period of time. The paradigm is thus a set of common beliefs about the world, based on past research.

According to Kuhn (1996), there is scientific research without paradigms, but this a sign of immaturity in a certain scientific field. (p.11)When a scientific paradigm establishes itself within a domain it usually means that the respective scientific field has achieved a theory that successfully, although not completely, matches the observable natural phenomena.

The way in which a paradigm imposes itself over other possible paradigms has thus two main characteristics in Kuhn's view: the paradigm is, first of all, sufficiently innovative and able to explain certain phenomena, so as to have a considerable numbers of adherents and, at the same time, it leaves room for further research, that is, its assumptions have to be valid enough to allow further developments from its premises. (p.

10) Thus, the main premise for normal science is the existence of paradigms, that is, of consensus with regard to the phenomena under investigation. Also, science evolves through a series of paradigm shifts, that is, the old world-views are replaced by new world-views. This is why, according to Kuhn (1996), for some of the scientific phenomena the appearance of the first paradigm is also the appearance of first coherent or valid answer to its problems.

As the author exemplifies, optics did not have a paradigm before Newton, and therefore, did not make any consistent progress until after the seventeenth century.(p. 13) The lack of unity within a field of research or of commitment to the same assumptions is a clear evidence that no real progress has been made in a certain field.

Kuhn (1996) makes a point of emphasizing the fact that the notion of a paradigm is much more apt to describe the consensus existing at a certain time within a scientific field, than would be the idea that research submits to and obeys the exact set of rules.

The author speaks of the priority of paradigms over rules, and argues that there can be consensus or agreement with regard to a certain scientific matter, but the scientists might, nevertheless, give a different account of the particular details that lead to a certain solution. (p.44) Therefore, normal science agrees with respect to the problem-solutions, and not to the specific rules used to achieve these solutions.

This is why the most important requisite for scientific progress is the existence of paradigms or consensus within a certain field, and these paradigms are always oriented towards the solutions offered, and not necessarily towards a set of applicable rules. Thus, Kuhn defined a scientific paradigm as a certain widely accepted world-view, with respect to the specific solutions offered by theory to the natural observed phenomena.

The importance of paradigm is easily noticed if we realize that, even when it proves as completely inaccurate, it still is the most innocuous token that a respective science has made real progress and has achieved maturity. Also, science always evolutes through paradigm shifts, that is through patterned not random changes in the world-views. A paradigm is therefore never abolished until a new one emerges to replace it. The paradigm is thus the essential concept for theorizing scientific revolutions.

Science evolves through revolutions, and the revolutions appear when an old paradigm is substituted by a new one. The structure of scientific revolutions has as a primary division the scientific paradigm. According to Kuhn (1996), normal science is essentially puzzle-solving, that is, does not aim at achieving novelties, or at unexpected results. Even when research is directed towards the formulation of a new paradigm, the main concern is with the complex conceptual and instrumental frame that may be used to attain an outcome that is already foreseen. (p.

36) That is to say that research in normal science is very similar to puzzle-solving: the picture of the particular phenomenon under investigation may be already known, but the most appropriate path that can lead to the solution is not known. Therefore, the scientist almost always focuses on the theoretical frame needed to explain an observable phenomenon. Having understood this fact, Kuhn (1996) directs his analysis to the way in which scientific revolutions occur in this context of the puzzle-solving character of normal science.

If normal science is not concerned with discovery or novelty primarily, then the question of how discovery actually arises should be posed. To this, Kuhn offers a few very pertinent solutions. First of all, discovery and invention are the most important parts of scientific revolutions. In Kuhn's view, discovery is not, first of all, a sudden event, that has a very specific and unique date in time and an equally unique author or discoverer. Discovery may be sometimes a complex process and may very well have more authors.

The example that Kuhn (1996) gives of such a discovery as a complex process is the discovery of oxygen, which could be claimed by or attributed to at least three scientists: W. Scheele, Joseph Priestley and Lavoisier. The date is also uncertain, it can be 1774 or 1775, according to whether the discovery is credited to one or the other of the last two scientists. This uncertainty is possible because the two scientists either used the wrong assumptions or believed that they discovered something else. (p.

53) Kuhn (1996) explains this by arguing that a discovery is not complete until both the fact that something is and a knowledge of what it is have been recognized. (p.55) This makes discovery into a more complex process than it is usually considered. Also, the example Kuhn uses also reveals another essential fact about the nature of discovery: discovery essentially appears in the form if the acknowledgement of a certain anomaly in the structure of a paradigm. This can be proven with the example of the discovery of X-rays by Roentgen.

This discovery was made precisely by noticing something which was wrong, or which did not fit the already known paradigm. (p.57) The next important step in conceptualizing the structure of scientific revolutions is to account for paradigm change and inventions. Kuhn (1996) observed that new scientific theories or changes in paradigms occur when this awareness of anomaly generalizes and is acknowledge as a crisis in a certain scientific field. This is noticeable in one of the major and most revolutionary paradigm shifts: the Copernican revolution.

Before that, the astronomic model generally accepted for no less than a millennium and a half had been the Ptolemaic system, which accurately predicted planetary moves, but which was, nevertheless, extremely artificial and inaccurate in its theoretical frame. Finally, Copernicus and some of his co-workers became aware that the paradigm accepted so far was not a valid one, and that astronomy was in a state of crisis. (p. 69) Thus, according to Kuhn, scientific revolutions occur through a crisis and through the awareness of this crisis.

However, it should be noted that this crisis is not over, or the paradigm is not rejected until a new coherent one has been formulated by scientists. Thus, the scientists do not look directly at facts in general to solve a crisis, but to further theoretical developments that could successfully replace the old theories. This is in Kuhn's account the specific response to crisis.

(p.77) After explaining the way in which paradigm shift occurs, it is necessary to explain the way in which or the criteria for accepting a new paradigm. The resolution of the new paradigm is determined, as Kuhn explains, through a competitive process which could be likened to that of natural selection in biology, as was theorized by Darwin. Thus, a new paradigm is established after it has passed the test when compared to the other available solutions at a certain time. (p.

171) This is thus the structure of scientific revolutions in Kuhn's view: the essential concept for their definition is the existence of paradigms or world-views, that serve as a point of departure first for further development. Research can be added to the paradigms through discovery, without an actual paradigm shift, or the paradigm can be completely replaced through crisis. Scientific revolutions are sometimes so great that it can be said that with the advent of a paradigm shift, the world itself changes.

However, as Kuhn (1996) sustains, the world does not actually change every time a paradigm shift occurs, although it can be said that the world does become a different place for the ones who perceive it from the point-of-view of a different paradigm. (p. 111) In the light of Kuhn's theory, the history of past science as well of the structure of the present science and the forecast of the future developments can be defined or predicted.

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is a great step towards an understanding of the past of science as well as of the manner in which it evolves. Evolution of science or progress is realized through the paradigm shifts, or after the moment of crisis of a certain science. Crisis appears essentially when a world-view can no loner be accepted as valid, and is a fundamental moment in evolution. Also, Kuhn (1996) argues that scientific evolution shares a common ground with natural selection as theorized by Darwin.

Moreover, Kuhn tries to account for the fact that the science does evince an evolution, although this evolution is characterized by the absence of a goal. Science evolves without having a definite target, and this once more underlines the importance of paradigms as the means through which evolution becomes explainable. The world-views are replaced because of the very structure that is proper of scientific revolutions in general. (p. 171) The past of science can be interpreted according to the view that Kuhn offers as a series of these scientific revolutions.

However, it must be noted that there was a time in every science when there were no paradigms constructed yet. Thus, Kuhn (1996) maintains that the degree of specialization achieved by a certain science is obvious in its means of investigation and transmission of the information- in the earlier stages of science the book was the most common way of making reports in science, and most of these reports were intelligible to everyone.

However, in time, as the research in a certain scientific field developed and extended, the corpus of data became gradually unintelligible for the common person who was not a scientist. (p. 20) The period before the emergence if any coherent paradigm, is what Kuhn describes as a confused state for a science, which is unlikely to lead to any progress at all. On the contrary, error or anomaly, as it has been seen are much more likely to be turned into coherent patterns.

The structure of scientific revolutions as proposed by Kuhn is easily noticeable in the past of science. The same case applies to the existence of paradigms or world-views that appear and then disappear because of new ones.

Many of such paradigms can be identified throughout the history of physics, for example: from Aristotle's paradigm of the world as made of matter, which was further made of atoms characterized by specific movements, shapes and sizes, then to Newton's view of the world made up of forces which were intimately related to mass, to Einstein's theory of relativity which proposed that the world is a space-time continuum, and which abolished the idea of absolute objectivity in science.

All these developments and radical changes show the way in which revolutions take place, and how the surprising and radical changes in world-views take place. The current developments in science derivate also from the precedent revolutions, and are the results of the entire succession of paradigm shifts that occurred throughout history.

The new theories, such as quantum physics or the theories related to the evolution and the beginnings of the universe, when analyzed with the past theories in mind, are obviously derived from the past assumptions made in the same fields, and through a gradual combination of discoveries and of new paradigms. It becomes thus obvious that the present science can only be interpreted accurately with the aid of the past paradigms and.