Kuhn: An Introduction

What is science and how does it change over time? These are questions which are by no means easy to address with simply answers. In this post I will outline VERY briefly what some of the proposed answers to these questions have been as well as Thomas Kuhn’s own response to them.

What is Science?

Some theories hold that science is simply a body of knowledge. For instance that whatever one finds in a text book is what science is. One wonders, however, what separates the body of knowledge found in science books from that which is found in all other books? Should that which is found to be contained in a history of art book be considered science? What about those creation science textbooks? What about the Bible itself? This definition of science seems inadequate for the purpose at hand.

Other have held that science is a set of practices, institutions and methods. In other words, it is the set of rules which are followed in gaining the body of knowledge mentioned above. This was certainly the pre-Kuhnian philosophers of science believed. One can also ask what it s that separates the methods of science from that of other enterprises, but the answers given here, as near as I can tell, haven’t been entirely without merit.

The major problem with this model is that it idealized science too much. The methods of verification and falsification only work within the context of other assumptions which are taken for granted. Such a model is simply an account of what science is, but without the scientists and this seems wrong.

Some have gone the other extreme by suggesting the science is the current state of knowledge or beliefs held by the scientists who practice it. This seems to be the most plausible account of what science currently is ontologically speaking, but one wonders what it is that sets “scientists” apart from “non-scientists”.

How does/can science change?

To this question as well many answers have been suggested. Some have suggested that science evolves by a process of rational argument akin to the manner in which logic and mathematics are done. This seems a bit ideal in addition to excluding the empirical nature of the scientific enterprise as opposed to the rational enterprises of math and logic.

Some have suggested that science changes by an irrational social process. This model would certainly seem to suggest that science is whatever is currently believed by the scientists themselves. Furthermore, such an account seems to again be an account of scientific change without the scientists themselves having much say in the matter. Certainly there must be some rationality in the process.

Does science change according to empirical observation and discovery? This would seem to suggest a model of science which is simply a process of accumulative fact gathering, which is certainly not what science actually is. As noted before, empirical observation and discovery can only play a part in the context of other assumptions which are held by the scientific community.

While these accounts all seem relatively correct, they all are simply too extreme and the truth probably involves a partial overlap of all such accounts.

Kuhn’s approach to both questions is one and the same for what science is, according to him, is a consequence of how it developed. Further more, an interpretation of scientific change requires both an account of what science is as well as an account or model of how and why change occurs. The history of science, says Kuhn, is the solution to understanding both what science is as well as how it changes.

“History, if viewed as a repository for more than anecdote or chronology, could produce a decisive transformation in the image of science by which we are now possessed.”

Kuhn’s analysis of science and the process of scientific change potentially undermines a number of commonly held beliefs regarding the nature of the scientific enterprise. These beliefs include:

Scientific Realism: Science is an attempt to find out about the one real world. Truths about the world are true regardless of what people think and there is a unique best description of any chosen aspect of the world.

Demarcation: There is a sharp distinction between scientific theories and other kinds of beliefs.

Cumulativity: Science grows by accumulating more and more truths about the world. This would seem to compare with the pouring of sand on a pile in which mini and sometimes major avalanches occur from time to time.

Deductive: Statements about particular aspects of the world can be deduced from scientific theories, codified in statements of fundamental laws of nature.

Discovery/Justification distinction: The process by which we empirically discover true things about the world has a different “logic” from the logic through which we justify our beliefs in the laws that explain our discoveries.

Unity: The laws and principles of the various “special” sciences (Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Psychology, Sociology) are all interlocking logically so that there really is only one “unified” science (or will be eventually, or could be in principle).

Many of these beliefs regarding science are seem quite precious, ideas which should not be forfeited without some attempts at resistance. During the next few months we will consider Kuhn’s account in more detail which will allow us to see if we can salvage some of these beliefs.