Thomas Kuhn was not the only person in the post-WWII intellectual community which was responsible for undermining the Logical Positivist project. Consider for instance the claim put forth by Michael Polanyi that scientific knowledge was the production of a community and that this community required the internalization of a significant amount of value judgments and tacit knowledge by its neophytes. Similarly, Russell Hanson argued that objective observation free of all theory ladenness and value judgment was absolutely impossible due to the fact that people rather than eyes made observations. These ideas are all very much in line with those of Kuhn and for this reason it makes sense to speak of the Kuhn-Polanyi-Hanson critique of scientific knowledge. (more…)
