Books and Cooks Ithaca -- March 2000

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

Our rating: 3.9 cups of tea!

PEOPLE
Books and Cooks participants, email addresses and homepages where available.

PREVIOUS DISCUSSIONS and RATING SYSTEM
Check out some of the books we've discussed in the past, as well as our rating system and ratings for those books.

RECIPROCITY
There are lots of other book groups out there. On this page find some links to bookgroups we've had e-contact with.

BOOK LINKS
Check out this pile of book-related links.

The first Books and Cooks DRINK and THINK

Discussion date: March 31, 2000

Discussion place: Jen's Place, 7PM

Menu: Order-in Chinese, mixed drinks.

B&C recommender: I've read several excerpts from this book and found it to have an interesting perspective on the non-scientific factors that influence how science advances; I've been meaning to read the entire thing.

Amazon says:

There's a "Frank & Ernest" comic strip showing a chick breaking out of its shell, looking around, and saying, "Oh, wow! Paradigm shift!" Blame the late Thomas Kuhn. Few indeed are the philosophers or historians influential enough to make it into the funny papers, but Kuhn is one.

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is indeed a paradigmatic work in the history of science. Kuhn's use of terms such as "paradigm shift" and "normal science," his ideas of how scientists move from disdain through doubt to acceptance of a new theory, his stress on social and psychological factors in science--all have had profound effects on historians, scientists, philosophers, critics, writers, business gurus, and even the cartoonist in the street.

Some scientists (such as Steven Weinberg and Ernst Mayr) are profoundly irritated by Kuhn, especially by the doubts he casts--or the way he his work has been used to cast doubt--on the idea of scientific progress. Yet it has been said that the acceptance of plate tectonics in the 1960s, for instance, was sped by geologists' reluctance to be on the downside of a paradigm shift. Even Weinberg has said that "Structure has had a wider influence than any other book on the history of science." As one of Kuhn's obituaries noted, "we all live in a post-Kuhnian age."

The Books and Cooks The Structure of Scientific Revolutions Informal Reading Guide
(member-generated questions in no particular order)

• Is Kuhn's theory of 'crisis followed by a paradigm shift' really not aplicable to areas other than science (as he argues)? Did you buy that part of his argument? 

• Topic: "Almost always the men who achieve these fundamental mentions of a new paradigm have been either very young or very new to the field whose paradigm they change." (p. 40). Discuss.

• Kuhn includes lots of scientific case studies to support his theories. Did you find these a help or a hindrance? I.e., did you read all the examples -- especially those you didn't already know about, or did you skim them? 

• Kuhn claims that scientists are motivated to do science because of the 'challenge of the puzzle', not the importance of the problem. Is this accurate? He implies this is good and possibly necessary to the process of science. Do you agree? Where does this leave the issue of social responsibility in science? 

• Topic: "Once a first paradigm through which to view nature has been found, there is no such thing as research in the absence of any paradigm. To reject one paradigm without simultaneously substituting another is to reject science itself." (p. 79). Do you really think so? 

• How does computer science fit into the Kuhnian paradigm? 

• What would Kuhn say about truth? 

• Topic: "Scientists have not generally needed or wanted to be philosophers." (p. 88) What?!?!

• Kuhn equates science and progress, saying that the characteristic of making progress defines what fields are science. Does this seem accurate? What exactly does Kuhn mean by the word 'progress' when he says this? 

• Do paradigms ever repeat? (Like 70's fashions??)

• On p. 37 Kuhn noted the only problems the scientific community will permit/encourage its members to undertake are those that fit existing paradigms. Kuhn identified this issue more than 30 years ago. Has the scientific community changed since then? 

• Topic: "Given a textbook, the creative scientist can begin his research where it leaves off and thus concentrate exclusively upon the subtles and most esoteric aspects....No longer will his research...be...in books addressed... to anyone who might be interested in the subject matter of the field. Instead they will usually appear as brief articles addressed only to professional colleagues, the men whose knowledge of a shared paradigm can be assumed and who prove to be the only ones able to read the papers addressed to them." (p. 20). This rather depresses me. Discuss. 

This Page Last Revised: November 21, 2000.