obnoxio@BRAHMS.BERKELEY.EDU.UUCP (05/20/87)
Bravo! I like these articles. In article <3978@ihlpa.ATT.COM>, lew@ihlpa (Lew Mammel, Jr.) writes: > Indeed, they may find general support >for this attitude in the now fashionable Kuhnian outlook on the >history of science, although I think they push this approach rather >too far! "now fashionable"? Hmm. Fashionable to whom? I've never been able to figure out why Kuhn is so "fashionable". Is it because his book came out at the beginning of the sixties? Was it the phrase "Gestalt switch"? Now, I can understand why, *during* the sixties, that Kuhn would be so popular. But why today? It doesn't make sense. I've gotten the im- pression from the net that his book is the only philosophy of science book that most literate people ever end up reading. Why? ucbvax!brahms!weemba Matthew P Wiener/Brahms Gang/Berkeley CA 94720 "We can pay farmers not to grow crops, but we cannot pay artists to stop making art. Yet something must be done." --Jacques Barzun
samlb@well.UUCP (05/21/87)
People quote Kuhn on the philosophy of science because:
A) (Mostly) His book is the only one they've ever heard of.
B) It is written in clear literate English, not obscurantist
academic jargon.
--
Sam'l Bassett, Self-Employed Writer -- My words & ideas are my own!
34 Oakland Ave., San Anselmo CA 94960; (415) 454-7282
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Compuserve: 71735,1776; WU Easylink ESL 6284-3034; MCI SBassettpc@faron.UUCP (Penny Chase) (05/21/87)
Kuhn appealed (and appeals) for a number of reasons. First, he addressed questions with which many philopsophers of science had not been concerned. Instead of looking at existing scientific theories from the viewpoint of analytical philosophy he focused upon the problem of theory formation. Of course others were interested in the same problem (e.g., Popper, Hanson), but Kuhn was especially interested in viewing science as a human activity that is embedded in a social and institutional context. In so doing, he created a framework for the emergence of scientific theories (and resistance to them) that seemed relevant to historians and sociologists of science. Today, of course, there are many other philosophers who do the same thing (Lakatos, Feyerabend, Laudan, Kitcher, for example), and who perhaps do it with greater philosophical sophistication than Kuhn. But, probably because he was one of the first and also because Structure of Scientific Revolutions (SoSR) is such a provocative and intelligible statement, teachers of introductory courses in a variety of disciplines assign him. The second phenomenon contributing to Kuhn's popularity is that when many scientists read SoSR they said that Kuhn's description of normal scientific practice accurately reflected their own impressions of what they did. Thus, he also appealed to philosphically curious scientists (but probably not for his philosphy). Finally, many social scientists took Kuhn's DESCRIPTIVE analysis of "crisis" science as PRESCRIPTIVE in order to show that their discipline was a science. There are many introductory texts in psychology, anthropology, and sociology that begin with a discussion of the "paradigm crisis" of the discipline.-- - Penny Chase
kube@cogsci.berkeley.edu (Paul Kube) (05/21/87)
In article <8705200312.AA02647@brahms.Berkeley.EDU> obnoxio@brahms.berkeley.edu (Obnoxious Math Grad Student) writes: >I've never been able to figure out why Kuhn is so "fashionable". Kuhn is fashionable because he refuted the Popperian theory that theories are discarded because they are refuted, replacing it with the theory that theories are discarded because they are unfashionable. --Paul kube@berkeley.edu, ...!ucbvax!kube
greg@mind.UUCP (05/22/87)
In article <8705200312.AA02647@brahms.Berkeley.EDU> Matthew Wiener writes: >I've never been able to figure out why Kuhn is so "fashionable". Is it >because his book came out at the beginning of the sixties? Was it the >phrase "Gestalt switch"? I think you mean "paradigm shift." Kuhn did use the phrase "gestalt switch" as an analogy to help his readers understand what he meant by "paradigm shift." On the other hand, I may be misreading you, and you may be saying that this choice of analogy made Kuhn's work particularly palatable in the '60's. Quite possible. > >Now, I can understand why, *during* the sixties, that Kuhn would be so >popular. But why today? It doesn't make sense. I've gotten the im- >pression from the net that his book is the only philosophy of science >book that most literate people ever end up reading. Why? Kuhn *is* getting less popular, in the sense that students of the History of Science (among whom I number myself) are less likely to swallow him whole. The reason for this loss of uncritical acceptance (although he is still considered influential) is his fuzziness on periods of "crisis", and his neglect of situations in which supporters of different paradigms could engage in fruitful debate. The initial popularity was due to the scope of the book, and the fact that it appeared with a ready-made contemporary example : the "Geological Revolution". The status of Kuhn's work was enhanced by its seeming applicability to the G.R.; and the reification of the G.R. was accelerated by the ease with which it was describable in Kuhn's framework. As to why it is the only book on philosophy of Science that most people end up reading, I blame the Sagan phenomenon : breadth of scope, and good publicity. Those who are insufficiently aware of the degree to which differences of opinion exist in the scientific community think that once they have one expert's opinion, they know all they need to know. Thus the laurels go to the first on the field. greg
msellers@mntgfx.MENTOR.COM (Mike Sellers) (05/24/87)
In article <8705200312.AA02647@brahms.Berkeley.EDU>, obnoxio@BRAHMS.BERKELEY.EDU (Obnoxious Math Grad Student) writes: > Bravo! I like these articles. > In article <3978@ihlpa.ATT.COM>, lew@ihlpa (Lew Mammel, Jr.) writes: >> Indeed, they may find general support >>for this attitude in the now fashionable Kuhnian outlook on the >>history of science, although I think they push this approach rather >>too far! > > "now fashionable"? Hmm. Fashionable to whom? > > I've never been able to figure out why Kuhn is so "fashionable". Is it > because his book came out at the beginning of the sixties? Was it the > phrase "Gestalt switch"? You might be surprised at how *few* people have actually read his stuff. Or even heard of him (sigh). There was a book that came out recently (author and title conveniently forgotten...) that was basically Kuhn repackaged for the '80s. It was a small book with big type and big margins (tell you anything?), and it went over *real* big with a lot of the execs at my former place of employment. It was all about paradigm shifting and (alledgedly) how to recognize it happening around you. (BTW, in my book "paradigm" is one of those excellent words in our language that is so cogent that it seems bound to be beaten to death before most people figure out what it means... a lot like "parameter" or "heuristic" or "Gestalt".) > Now, I can understand why, *during* the sixties, that Kuhn would be so > popular. But why today? It doesn't make sense. I've gotten the im- > pression from the net that his book is the only philosophy of science > book that most literate people ever end up reading. Why? Well, some of us just plain like (some of) his ideas. I had some of his stuff crammed down my thoat years ago, for which I will be ever grateful. Many practitioners and viewers of science have far too sterile a view of how things change and how they remain the same, in my mind. The idea that, for example, the information processing model of psychology was gradually supplanting the behaviorist model at least partially because most of the old behaviorists were dying off should give any good psych student pause. What does this mean about the validity of current ideas? Are we losing good, solid theories simply because they atrophied in amongst a lot of (what we see as) deadwood? How much better are our explanations than the ones they replace, really? None of this is really earthshaking stuff once you are aware of it, but *so* many people aren't. On some level, Kuhn's work struck me as perhaps a great-great-granddaddy to Asimov's psychohistory. Okay, so its a flight of fancy; the point is that Kuhn drew together some threads in a way that few had done before, and that many still argue with. I don't know how "fashionable" Kuhn is right now, though. I guess I've been out of academia a bit too long :-]. > ucbvax!brahms!weemba Matthew P Wiener/Brahms Gang/Berkeley CA 94720 Sorry if this rambles too much; it is faaarrr to late for me to be at a keyboard. Mike Sellers ...!tektronix!sequent!mntgfx!msellers I always thought about, but never actually did, cite a bogus source in a psych paper by an author like: Gestalt, Heinrich... :-)