Kuhn Structure Scientific Revolutions

In Pursuit of Kuhn: The life of The Structure of Scientific Revolution beyond T.S. Kuhn

MAX HUNTER Introduction

Although Thomas S. Kuhn passed away on June 19, 1996; the historian—metaphorically speaking—will never rest in peace. His controversial text, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962)1 has sold more than a million copies and has been translated into approximately two dozen languages.2 The text is required reading in courses dealing with education, history, psychology, and the history and philosophy of science. Structure has continued to sell approximately 25,000 books a year for four decades. According to Kuhnian scholar Steve Fuller, “Structure remains one of the most highly cited works in the humanities and the social sciences. [Moreover,] when I entered Columbia University as an undergraduate in 1976, it was only one of two books by a living author that was required in the mandatory first-year course in ‘Classics of Contemporary Civilization.”3 More interestingly, in the process of writing a highly controversial text that would become a classic, Kuhn’s Structure took on a life of its own.

The popular reception of Structure across disciplinary boundaries is a manifestation of the text’s literary autonomy. A result of this extensive cross-disciplinary borrowing of the terms and theories in Structure, like Darwin, Einstein, and Freud, Kuhn benefits from being frequently quoted without ever having been read.4 One scientific magazine noted, “Although incommensurable has not become a cocktail party buzzword, ‘paradigm certainly has, so much so that editors of more serious journals tend to delete any reference to paradigms from manuscripts.”5 It is not the questionable invocation of terms like paradigm that that will interfere with Kuhn’s eternal rest. Instead, the forty-year-long controversy surrounding Kuhn’s “history written for philosophical purposes”6 will extend the phenomenal sales of his text and keep the historian “rolling in his grave.” A sign that this controversy rages on is that many of the Kuhn’s obituaries extensively discussed the controversial text and its significance in constructing a radical new image of science, which continues to be disputed. The discourse around the author and the text has been so volatile that it has disrupted his eulogy.

One journal, The Social Studies of Science,7 decided to include comments from ten different eulogizers, which provide a glimpse of the contemporary understanding of Kuhn’s role in the history and philosophy of science. Andrew Brown, a religious correspondent, claimed, “Kuhn’s vision had provided a cultural resource”8 that destroyed the authority of science and ended its cult status as an objective human endeavor. Another author claimed that Kuhn was the only historian of science to have written a classic text, but noted, “his own view of the nature of science, whatever is thought to be its virtues and failings, can be distinguished [through understanding the oddities and incongruities of his theories].”9 Steve Fuller ripped Kuhn and Structure in a piece titled “Confessions of a Recovering Kuhnian.”10 Finally, David Bloor used the paradigm concept as a metaphor to explain the author’s marginalized relationship to philosophers of science due to the hostility with which they received his text.11 The obituary conveyed the extraordinary nature of the author’s intellectual contribution. However, these authors could not avoid making Structure central to their accounts.

This research argues that the early criticisms of Kuhn’s Structure contextualize the adverse intellectual climate into which his theories were received by historians and philosophers of science. This contextualization is accomplished through surveying these criticisms in reverse chronological order. The intent of this approach is the deconstruction of the current historical Kuhn in order to determine an accurate historical representation of the theorist. For the most part, Kuhn’s ideas were found antithetical to the common sense of these scholars and contradicted notions of logical positivism12 that were prevalent during the period of its publication. Recreating the volatile and enduring discourse which surrounded Structure requires a summary of its criticisms and related meetings that were held to discuss the text. Kuhn’s obituaries are also useful due to their distillation of the author in relation to his critics, friends, and peers and their perceptions on the significance of Structure at the time of his departure.

I argue that criticisms and opinions of the text are directly correlated to the interpretations of and intellectual investments in the text or to opposing philosophies, which were often independent of Kuhn’s intention. I argue that the hostile response served as a genesis—or starting point—for the intellectual bifurcation of Structure from its author. This exercise of critical reconstruction also demonstrates that although Kuhn experienced professional advancement, held honored positions in the organizations of both the history and philosophy of science, and received the highest honors in these disciplinary communities, he remained intellectually and socially on the

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margins of these fields unto his death. However, Structure maintained its life through consistent involvement in intellectual discourse.

In addition to Structure, this exercise will also require a discussion of The Essential Tension,13 and post-Structure, which were written to clarify and further articulate Kuhn’s controversial text. We will also discuss reviews of his collaboration with German philosopher Paul Hoyningen-Huene, i.e. Reconstructing Scientific Revolutions: Thomas S. Kuhn’s Philosophy,14 which was written to further articulate, expand, and support the Kuhnian enterprise. This examination will demonstrate that Structure subsumed the Kuhnian canon in order to enhance its own intellectual currency and perpetuate its existence. The summation of Kuhn’s response to his critics demonstrates that Structure has not one, but a plethora of philosophical existences.

The explication of the diverse meanings that Structure held for scholars across the academy requires a brief discussion of the text’s multiple interpretations. The examination of current journal articles outside of the history and philosophy of science reveal that Kuhn’s text was unintentionally appropriated across disciplinary boundaries. I demonstrate that cross-disciplinary appropriation of his ideas was a function of the veneer of authority provided through his strong academic ties to James B. Conant, former President of Harvard University and Director of the Manhattan Project, and to his academic pedigree. I argue that Kuhn attempted to justify his critique of the traditional image of science through advertising his pedigree in the preface of Structure and created for himself a veil of credibility. In turn, it allowed scholars in the humanities to borrow his theories in their pursuit to diminish the high regard for science through arguing that a number of intellectual endeavors function in a similar “objective” or “rational” manner.15

In the process of my investigation I will touch upon texts that dealt with the internal aspects of science in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These are texts that Conant cited in his own works. The intent is to de-sensationalize Structure and reveal that an aspect of the significance accredited Structure—in terms of being innovative or novel—is inaccurate and that external historical considerations were imminent in the future of the history of science. However, I argue that the history of science has evolved through scholars appropriating the text to advance such work, but not to the degree that Kuhn suggested. Moreover, the disciplinary squabbling over Kuhn’s theories and the unintended cross-disciplinary appropriation of Kuhn’s ideas has caused Structure to have a life of its own.

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Summary)

Kuhn’s theory of change and growth in the sciences hinged on three core concepts: paradigms, normal

science, and incommensurability. Critics found notions of paradigms and incommensurability most problematic.16 Paradigms were described as “universally recognized scientific achievements that for a time provides the model problems and solutions to a community of practitioners.”17 These achievements are foundational to a discipline’s mundane activity based on a suggested conception of nature. In the absence of such a model, the lack of expectation and predictability of natural phenomenon would impede investigation. These models emerged from either pre-paradigmatic science or normal science.

Pre-paradigmatic science was often unregulated to the point of chaos.18 In the formative stages of a scientific discipline, investigative pursuits sought to determine the areas major questions and define its parameters. This process produced a paradigm that allowed for normal science. Consequently, a paradigm was seen as governing the approaches and questions of a scientific discipline and defining its community membership. Kuhn stated:

Men whose research is based on shared paradigms are committed to the same rules and standards for scientific practice. That commitment and the apparent consensus it produces are prerequisites for normal science, i.e., for the genesis and continuation of a particular research tradition.19

A new economy of scientific theories is—in most cases—the product of the necessary and promising openness of an established discipline and/or an emerging paradigm. The expression “open-ended”20 is an allusion to the potential and unsolved problems subject to a set of scientific practices, because a paradigm provides a description of nature that sets forth future problems both appropriate and manageable for a discipline's practitioners.

According to Kuhn, this undetermined process was possible because “the paradigm functions by permitting the replication of examples, any one of which could in principle serve to replace it. In a science, on the other hand, a paradigm is rarely an object for replication. Instead, like an accepted judicial decision in the common law, it is an object for further articulation and specification under new or more stringent conditions.”21 “Further articulation” was synonymous with normal science. It is equated with this process in that “it is a highly cumulative enterprise,

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eminently successful in its aim, the steady extension of the scope and precision of scientific knowledge, [and this success once again leads to] new and unsuspected phenomena [i.e. anomalies].” Kuhn assumed in his description of the growth of a scientific discipline that there was a reciprocal relationship between paradigm and normal science, which lead to revolution through the detecting or resistance anomalies.22 Anomalies or novelties were aspects of nature that defied the expectations of scientist based on their training under the prevailing paradigm.23

Normal science was “research firmly based upon one or more past scientific achievements, achievements that some particular scientific community acknowledges for a time as supplying the foundation for its further practice.”24 It was instituted when arbitrary descriptions and interpretations of nature are discontinued due to “the triumph of one of the pre-paradigm schools, which, because of its own characteristic beliefs and preconceptions, emphasized only some special part of the too sizable and inchoate pool of information.”25 Triumph was not equated with the complete resolution of all the problems or puzzles in a field. Although a paradigm resolved a major anomaly or anomalies, it also defined unsolved problems.

Structure suggested that normal scientific activity—made possible due to the empirical and theoretical space provided by a reigning paradigm—has a unique way of producing disciplinary conflict. Kuhn explained, “Research under a paradigm must be a particularly effective way of inducing paradigm change.”26 The meaning of this statement is fairly simple. The parameters established and made firm through the articulation of a paradigm have a psychological effect on scientists.27 The paradigms under which they have worked appear to dominate their perceptions of nature and require an exclusive commitment. Kuhn described the benefit of theoretical indoctrination. He stated, “normal science, the puzzle-solving activity we have just examined, is a highly cumulative enterprise, eminently successful in its aim, the steady extension of the scope and precision of scientific knowledge.”28 Nonetheless, unyielding problems are in time discovered, and their accumulation will eventually lead to intellectual strife.

The accumulation of anomalies was seen as inevitably either splintering a field of science or creating a new one when theoretical adaptation led to an eventual revolution. Though unintended, this process is implicit in modern science. Kuhn explained:

Normal science does not aim at novelties of fact or theory and, when successful, finds none…. History suggests that the scientific enterprise has developed a uniquely powerful technique for producing surprises of this sort. If this characteristic of science is to be reconciled with what has already been said, then research under a paradigm must be a particularly effective way of inducing paradigm change. That is what fundamental novelties of fact and theory do. Produced inadvertently by a game played under one set of rules, their assimilation requires the elaboration of another set.

Kuhn acknowledged that his theory of scientific growth was circular but argued that its development proceeds in a linear or rational manner. And though many argued that this description of expansion seemed irrational and relativistic, Kuhn claimed it transpired in a manner that is comprehensible.

Anomalies are discovered in the context of research that is guided by the common assumptions intellectually embodied in a discipline’s most informed practitioners. Therefore, scientific change was dependent upon and initiated within a scientific community whose activities were governed by agreed-upon rules, theories, and appropriate technologies as suggested under its particular paradigm. According to Kuhn, it was in the context of cooperation, established guidelines, and tradition that science most often flourished.29 His critics often interpreted this as a positivistic a progressive notion of science based on Kuhn’s assumption of accumulation.30 However, Kuhn denied epistemological and teleological progress.31

The tension between coherence and revolution implicitly surfaced in Kuhn’s discussion of the role of the scientific apparatus and the technician. He stated, “[process began with] the previous awareness of anomaly, the gradual and simultaneous emergence of both observational and conceptual recognition, and the consequent change of paradigm categories and procedures often accompanied by resistance.”32 Change and resistance are events that transpire in the context of tradition. Kuhn explained:

Without the special apparatus that is constructed mainly for the anticipated functions, the results that lead ultimately to novelty could not occur. And even when the apparatus exists, novelty ordinarily emerges only for the man who, knowing with precision what he should expect is able to recognize that something has gone wrong. Anomaly appears only against the background provided by the paradigm. The more precise and far reaching that paradigm is, the more sensitive an indicator it provides of anomaly and hence of an occasion for paradigm change.33

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This insight diminished the emphasis on competition and radical deviations that are so often a part of the accepted interpretation of Kuhnian thought. Although Kuhn’s argument does not negate conflict and confrontation, it simultaneously testified to “the strongly traditional nature of normal science and to the completeness with which that traditional pursuit prepares the way for its own change.”34

One essayist wrote, “Kuhn’s account of the dynamic of scientific growth—paradigm-normal science-puzzle solving-anomaly-crisis-extraordinary science-revolution-normal science—became widely known as the last nail in the coffin of the positivists conception of science and the turning point in the demise of Popperianism.”35 This perception contextualizes the debated that continues as to the meaning and value of Structure to the history, philosophy, and sociology of science. As we survey this discourse—in reverse chronological order—it will reveal how this struggle has perpetuated the life of the text and it author. BEYOND STRUCTURE 2000

The impact of Structure is evident in post-life discussions of the author. At the beginning of the 21st century, the contributors to this discourse provide an image of Kuhn and his text, which are often incongruent with reality. The comments and criticisms of those surveyed convey a portrait of Kuhn that is in unique and in some cases self-serving. For example, Steve Fuller’s, Thomas S. Kuhn: A Philosophy for Our Times is unique in its characterization and utilization of Kuhn.36 In fact, the text is the further articulation of an article Fuller wrote on the 30th anniversary of Structure which was titled, “Being There with Thomas Kuhn: A Parable for Postmodern Times.”37 This account is an attempt to reconstruct the world Kuhn transformed. In both works, he argued that Kuhn’s ability to reshape our understanding was based on his being a protégé of Conant and timing.

Fuller begins by attempting to make sense of the success of Structure. He argued, “Whatever originality adheres to the book lies not in the unique brilliance of its ideas but in the fortuitous timing and placing of its appearance.” He goes on to state, “Kuhn saw as far as he did because he stood on the shoulder of giants…but it only takes a dwarf standing on the shoulder of giants to see beyond them and from a distance [it might] look like the [giant’s] head.” 38 Fuller went on to liken Structure to a theoretical innovation. This allowed for the comparison of Kuhn’s success to scientific and technological innovators, who cleverly take advantage of someone else’s original concept to take a lion’s share of the market.39

The dwarf on the shoulders of the tallest giant was not the only unflattering metaphor unemployed in the critical text. The text compared the historian to Chauncey, a character who was played by Peter Sellers in Being There.40 Fuller explained:

Chauncey is a kindly man of childlike simplicity, who in the course of settling the estate of his deceased employer, is subject to several misunderstandings that by the end of the film, land him as a candidate for the presidency of the United States…Chauncey’s interlocutors take his quite literal references to gardening and television, the entire scope of his existence, as metaphors for various aspects of political life…The collective participation needed to propel Chauncey to ever greater acclaim is increasingly evident…until he becomes a genuine rallying point for the disparate [supporters]…A similar comedy errors has marked Kuhn’s reception.41

Fuller used this metaphor to do more than poke fun at Kuhn. It was unveiled in his argument, “a seemingly radical innovation quickly acquires widespread currency probably serves some well-established interests that remain hidden.”42 Fuller proceeded to discuss Kuhn’s intellectual affiliation with Big Science and the Cold War through his ties to Conant in during Kuhn’s formative years. The sociologist’s text is important for two reasons. First, it dealt with the questionable aspects of Kuhn’s intellectual exercise. Second, it contained Fuller’s own agenda. In a personal correspondence he wrote:

Kuhn’s historiography…preserved an ideal image of science that really only lasted for about 300 years (early 17th to 20th century) and then only in [a form of] physics, which no longer exists. Since Kuhn himself was a trained physicist, it curious that he nerves talks about science after 1920. [Finally,] Kuhn’s account of science never brings in heavy industry, big technology, the military, politics, or any of the other things that we associate with postwar science. Kuhn’s ideal of science is very much ‘little science’: i.e. [he avoided discussing) using a lot of taxpayers’ money or threatening to blow up (or save) the world.43

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This last statement reveals that Kuhn was a vehicle for Fuller’s own political agenda. It also implied that Kuhn’s totemic status possessed sufficient currency that Fuller could exploit it—through coupling Kuhn’s biography and text to his cause—for the benefit of his own agenda, which has more to do with the politics of science.44

In his afterlife, Kuhn and Structure served as models of contemporary historiography. Kenneth Caneva’s “Possible Kuhns in the History of Science: Anomalies of Incommensurable Paradigms” in Studies in History and Philosophy of Science45made the author the subject of his own methodology. Caneva described this approach went he stated, “[the] process of reconstruction the historian should pay particular attending to his subject’s apparent errors, not for their own sake but because they reveal far more of the mind at work than do the passages in which a scientist seems to record a result or an argument that modern science still retains.”46 Caneva attempted to use this method in order to in order to develop a coherent account of Kuhnian historiography through focusing on the anomalies in Kuhn’s work.

This act of revision was predicated on a methodology that exposed Kuhn’s innovative historical approach as unoriginal. In order to prove his point Caneva quoted Kuhn citing another philosopher. He stated, “In accord with Kuhn’s advice my way of going at these issues was in the first instance via a ‘deep and sympathetic immersion in the sources.’”47 This statement is interesting in that Caneva quoted Kuhn, who cited philosopher Bertrand Russell. Russell suggested, “In studying a philosopher, the right attitude is neither reverence nor contempt, but first a kind of hypothetical sympathy, until it is possible to know what it feels like to believe his theories.” Both professors encouraged their students to “look for apparent absurdities in the text [being studied] and ask yourself how a sensible person could have written them.”48 Inadvertently, this section of Caneva’s work revealed the unoriginality of Kuhn’s psychological approach.49

Caneva continued to excavate “Tensions in the Kuhnian Enterprise.” In other words, the author examined concepts and statements that tended to contradict or nullify one another in the various writings of Kuhn. The issues discussed were internal versus external influences on science and the role of the individual versus the community in the practice of science. Caneva was also perplexed with “the uneasy coexistence of his conception of discovery as an extended process with internal an alongside [a] conception of the [sudden] gestalt shift.”50 This attempt to reconcile contradictions (or tensions) in the theories of Kuhn reflected a continued tendency to understand Structure, which was predicated upon the assumption that Kuhn’s mind functioned without error.

This article begins under the assumption that Cavena was attempting to make sense of and revise the Kuhnian enterprise through Kuhn’s psychological-historiographical approach. However, it seemed that Caneva was simply speculating as to reconstruction of Kuhn’s cognitive processes and scholarly protocol, which resulted from his psychological approach to research.51 In the end, Cavena recognized that it was Kuhn’s “revelation, which was based on his own incommensurability, that was central to the Kuhnian enterprise.” He concluded that Kuhn “did not fully appreciate that the welter of concerns that coexisted in him as a person did not thereby constitute a harmonious whole.”52 1999

“Crisis and Kuhn” was Jensine Andresen’s contribution to Kuhnian scholarship.53 Andresen attempted to make sense of the role of crisis in Kuhn’s work through an examination of his personal biography. She immediately noted the diverse application of his ideas. Andresen stated, “Two generations of academics have credited Kuhn’s observations on the nature of scientific advance as having sufficient validity to apply them to disparate human endeavor.”54 Although these ideas seem to imply a universal explanation for scientific research, the author went on to find similarities between the theories and Kuhn’s personal and professional experiences.

Andresen went from the universal to the particular. The article argued that during periods of intellectual formation, crisis led to change in Kuhn’s own life. Andresen claimed:

Kuhn’s biography foreshadow specific themes in the model of scientific change he made popular in [Structure,] including the role of conceptual anomalies in leading to perceived crisis; crisis as the fundamental impetus for change; reaction to crisis as a specific and irreversible change of perspective; the formation of distinct conceptual schemes, or “paradigms,” and the exclusivity, or “incommensurability,” of successive paradigms.55

The article did not to attempt to evaluate Kuhn’s biography in order to provide a connection for its meaning for the history of science. Instead, Andresen was arguing that a theorist’s emotional and psychological state-of-being have a reciprocal relationship in the development and application of their models for perceiving their subject matter.56

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The article reviewed several aspects of Kuhn’s cultural, emotional, intellectual, psychological, and political formation. It began with Kuhn’s political activities in the Hessian Hills School in 1936 and the inner turmoil he dealt with over pacifism. She drew upon essays written by Kuhn at Hessian Hills and Harvard to demonstrate the crisis theme in his life. The first, titled “Report on Student Strikes,”57 dealt with his feelings on the ensuing war in Europe and being conflicted over whether or not to sign the Oxford oath, which would have meant he would not fight. The second, “The War and My Crisis” was written during Kuhn’s sophomore year and begins with his earlier skepticism over pacifism and later stance in support of the war.

An aspect of the essay discussed how moving from the Hessian Hills environment to a more rigorous and socially different school away from his family led to a type of incommensurability. Kuhn wrote:

This may sound like a lot of bother over a simple change of mind which had been made before with little malaise by many whose judgment I respected…I had been raised among people who believed strongly that war was wholly bad, who opposed it still. I was too closely knit to them by these more basic ideas, my faith in reason and my self-classification as a liberal, to break with them without destroying this base too. For a person whose entire rational life revolved around these concepts’ as did mine, this was a major crisis.58

This crisis was the result of Kuhn’s doubting his faith in reason. He argued, “‘The basis of all my ideas was a complete trust in reason…My faith contained nothing mystic or divine…that reason was adequate to the proper solution of all questions…The picture I built for the future was a rational one…one which seems vague and empty today.’” Kuhn went on to cite the role that ‘external’ and ‘internal’ forces had on his new “‘foundation for action and continued progress.’”59 This section dealt with the brunt of Andresen’s argument, after which the article continued with several pages of biographical data. 1998

In 1998 two essays were published that are valuable to this exercise. The first was a late review of Structure for New York Review of Books from a former colleague of Kuhn’s, physicist Steven Weinberg. Although they had worked together at Berkley in the 1960s, Weinberg was only an acquaintance of Kuhn’s and did not read Structure until after the second edition was published in 1972. He and his other colleagues found it exciting. Later, Kuhn and Weinberg ended up at M.I.T where Weinberg learned to admire Kuhn. Weinberg, like most others, recognized that Structure had a broader influence than any other history of science text.60 He noted the significance of the text in relation to the fact that it was “invoked” again and again in the intellectual conflict over the relationship of science and culture.61

According to Weinberg, the invocation of Kuhn has not always been positive. He noted, “Soon after Kuhn’s death in 1996, the sociologist Clifford Geertz remarked that Kuhn’s book had ‘opened the door to eruption of the sociology of knowledge’ into the study of the sciences.”62 Then he described Kuhn’s theories and revealed that the first critic of Kuhn’s paradigms was Conant. After reading Structure, the ex-president of Harvard referred to “paradigm” as ‘a word you seem to have fallen in love with!’ and ‘a magical verbal word to explain everything!’63 Weinberg also noted that according to Margaret Masterman’s tally, Kuhn had used “paradigm” in at least 20 twenty different ways.64 He concluded that debating the meaning of “paradigm” was frivolous, because as Kuhn had asserted there is more to a scientific consensus than just a set of explicit theories.”65

The definitions, meanings, and philosophical conception of paradigms in relation to the sciences did not trouble the reviewer. Instead, its potential implications were troublesome. After reading several of Kuhn’s works, including Structure, he was bothered by “his radically skeptical conclusions about what is accomplished by science, [i.e. physics and the allied physical sciences].” He felt that “these conclusions have made Kuhn a hero to the philosophers, historians, and sociologists, and cultural critics who question the objective character of science, and who prefer to describe scientific theories as social constructions.”66 This leads the physicists into a tirade against Kuhn and paradigmatic science.

One of the distinguishing characteristics of Kuhn’s paradigms is the notion of psychological conversions, which are described as religious conversions or “like the optical illusion created by pictures in which what had seemed to be white rabbits against a black background suddenly appears as black goats against a white background.”67 Weinberg focused on the implications of Kuhn’s argument that after a gestalt-switch a scientist could not return to their former scientific world. He stated:

For Kuhn the shift is more profound: he added that ‘the scientist does not preserve the gestalt subject’s freedom to switch back and forth between ways of seeing.’ In scientific revolutions it is not only our

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scientific theories that change but the very standards by which scientific theories are judged, so that the paradigms that govern successive periods are incommensurable.68

Weinberg deduced that implicit within the paradigm concept was the eradication of scientific accumulation of truth. When Kuhn eliminated the notion of truth—while holding on to the notion of progress—science was seen as evolving as biological evolution, i.e. “a process from behind.”69 Kuhn’s deconstruction of the sciences was quite unpleasant for scientists who believed they were pursuing objective truth. Consequently, Weinberg complained that Kuhn’s views were “delicious to those more skeptical of the pretensions of science, [because] if scientific theories can only be judged within the context of a particular paradigm, then in this respect scientific paradigms of any one paradigm are not privileged over other ways of looking at the world.”70 Consequently, it had been argued, if science did not mirror nature, perhaps it-mirrored culture.71 Weinberg interpretation represented a line of reasoning that had brought Kuhn much frustration. The review suggests that Kuhn had encouraged such interpretations and in a sense he had. The example that Weinberg used was a 1992 Harvard Lecture he commented “that it is hard to imagine what can be meant by the phrase that a scientific theory takes us ‘closer to the truth.’” In the same lecture proclaimed, “I am not suggesting, let me emphasize, that there is a reality, which science fails to get at. My point is rather that no sense can be made of the notion of reality as it has ordinarily functioned in the philosophy of science.”72 For Weinberg, these kinds of statements exemplified the associations made between Kuhn and unorthodox philosophers. In particular, Paul Feyerabend, who felt that Kuhn’s incommensurability, supported his irrationality in science.73 However, Kuhn felt this association was obscene.

Weinberg went on to mention that scholars in the Strong Program brought Kuhn a great deal of consternation.74 After historicizing the intellectual movement, he concluded that “it is ‘strong’ in its uncompromising skeptical aim to show how political and social power and interests dominate the success or failure of scientific theories.”75 He quoted Kuhn, stating: ‘‘I am among those who have found the claims of the strong program absurd, and example of deconstruction gone mad.’”76 In his mind paradigm switches did not cause the preceding paradigm to become irrelevant. Therefore, both philosophers and sociologists had misunderstood Kuhn in their invoking him to support their descriptions of science “as social constructions, not so different from democracy or baseball.”77 The article also discussed Kuhn’s response to the misapplication of Structure through adjusting his argument and focusing in on language theory. Weinberg noted that those who benefited from the establishment of a new paradigm and those who participated in a scientific revolution experience a major linguistic difference.78 He stated:

Those who participate in a scientific revolution are in a sense living in two worlds: the earliest period of normal science, which is breaking down, and the new period of normal science, which they do not yet fully comprehend. It much less difficult for scientists in one period of normal science to understand the theories of an earlier paradigm in their mature form. 79

Kuhn felt that language distilled the image of a paradigm’s expansion and transition. Weinberg clarified, “ Meaning[s] can change, but generally they do so in the direction of an increased richness and precision of definition, so that we do not lose the ability to understand the theories of past periods of normal science.”80 In the Kuhnian framework, our ability to apprehend and apply theories from the past led to the illusion that we understood the actual scientific perceptions and worldviews of past scientists. Kuhn’s Black-Body Theory and the Quantum Discontinuity 1894-1912 81quickened Weinberg to his own ahistorical bias. His assumptions were not based on first hand investigation.82 He explained, “Kuhn’s 1978 book on the birth of quantum theory convinced me that I made this just mistake in trying to understand what Max Planck was doing when he introduced the idea of the quantum [sic].”83 Consequently, Weinberg felt that Kuhn had been successful in his attempt not only to introduce readers to the theories but also to create the possibility of perceiving and understanding older scientific paradigms. This revelation is significant in that Weinberg used it in a review on Structure, however it was based on a later text.84 This experience left Weinberg unconvinced of the general consideration of Kuhn’s argument. He concluded that Structure had overstated the power of paradigms and puzzle solving. Weinberg found value in Kuhn’s explanation of normal science because it demonstrated progress, which was affirmed in cosmology and in the elementary particle physics of the 1970s. However, he stated, “[Kuhn] exaggerated the extent to which the discovery of science is inadvertent [and] was wrong in saying that no part of the work of normal science is to find new sort of phenomena.”85 More importantly, it was his explanation of extraordinary science or periods of revolution that brought him fame.

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The review argued that notions of extraordinary science and incommensurability were “seriously misleading.”86 Weinberg shared that the problem with revolutions was the vehicle of change-paradigms. He noted, as others had, that Kuhn’s own paradigm shift brought him into the fields of history and philosophy of science. Weinberg felt that these shifts are often inconsequential. He argued, “[Although] Newtonian physics was a mega-paradigm shift, nothing has happened in our understanding of motion since then… [and it] fits Kuhn’s description of paradigm shift.”87

The issue found most detestable was the notion of Kuhnian paradigms, because the theory invalidated the meaning of reality and truth for scientists. According to Kuhn, “’No sense can be made of the notion of reality as it has ordinarily functioned in the philosophy of science.”88 Weinberg was keenly aware that philosophers debated philosophy and field of expertise was physics. This awareness restrained discussing a topic in which he lacked expertise. He concluded, “For Kuhn to say that as a philosopher he has trouble understanding what is meant by truth or reality proves nothing beyond the fact that he has trouble understanding what is meant by truth or reality.”89 OBITUARIES 1996

The obituaries that announced Kuhn’s death are revelatory in that they represent how inseparable the author, his theories, and Structure were to diverse academic communities. The late edition of the New York Times announced, “Thomas Kuhn, 73; Devised Science Paradigm.” The body of the article began, “Thomas S. Kuhn, whose theory of scientific revolution became a profoundly influential landmark of 20th century intellectual history, died on Monday at his home in Cambridge, Mass. He was 73.”90 It continued:

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, was conceived while Professor Kuhn was a graduate student in theoretical physics…it punctured the widely held notion that scientific change was a strictly rational process. Professor Kuhn’s treatise influenced scientists but also economists, historians, sociologists and philosophers, touching off considerable debate. It…remains required reading in many basic courses in the history and philosophy of science. [He] was author and co-author of five books and scores of articles on the philosophy and history of science. But Dr. Kuhn remained best known for The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 91

This article went on for several paragraphs, but only the final section fits the mode of the traditional obituary in describing the simple details of his life and naming his family members. On July 1, 1996, Time was much briefer but included language that reflected Kuhn’s innovative lexicon. The magazine observed, “Died. Thomas Kuhn, 73, influential history of science professor; of cancer; in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Kuhn said that scientific advancement was revolutionary—not evolutionary—and occurred when one scientific paradigm displaced another.” The emphasis on Structure in these articles revealed that at the time of his parting the author and his text had become conflated.

The diversity of Kuhn’s influence as stated in the New York Times was evidenced in the announcements that were unrelated to the history and philosophy of science. On July 13, 1996 The Economist announced, “His big idea was bigger than he was.”92 It continued:

Thomas Kuhn, whose The theory of Scientific Revolutions questioned the theory of scientific knowledge…unleashed the notion that science is not a smooth, authoritative progression, but lurches forward in a series of semi-rational fits. He was then forced to watch as this theory devoured the minds of a generation hungry for new uncertainties. ‘I learned that people made everything up, that science worked like art,’ recalled a student hooked on Mr. Kuhn’s publication…After that I didn’t believe anything,” the student said.93

The author of the obituary article clearly distilled an aspect of the influence Kuhn’s text. He went on to explain, “Mr. Kuhn was attacked vehemently by philosophers and scientists, exalted by others and equally surprised by both.”94 The article detailed how the “sponginess” of Kuhn’s paradigms had led to this misunderstanding and concluded, “The ideas of paradigms is itself a paradigm of the strongest kind: one with a life of its own.”95 The Journals Nature and, Technology and Culture, ran a multiple page memorials announcing Kuhn’s “ultimate paradigm shift.”96 David Hull, who wrote the commentary in Nature, claimed, “Together with Karl Popper, who died in 1994, Thomas Kuhn has seen the most influential philosopher of science in recent history.”97 After beginning to discuss Structure, Hull explained:

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One reason why many scientists like Kuhn’s work was that they recognized his idea of normal science in their own experience. Most of the time, most scientists are engaged in normal science…[However] the usual conclusion that historians have been forced to reach is that Kuhn did not articulate his views about scientific revolution with them to decide [its value].98

He went on to note that though “incommensurable” had not become a cocktail party buzzword “paradigm” had.99 In fact, he claimed that the use of “paradigm” was not allowed in more serious journals and went on discuss the implications and impact of “incommensurability.”100 Hull explained that Kuhn had written specifically for philosophers of science. Due to the imprecise nature of Kuhn’s concepts and theories, philosophers found Structure “too poetical for their tastes.”101 Consequently, “Kuhn was deeply frustrated by the philosophical responses to his views [and] claimed that, among all the readers of his work, philosophers of science were uniquely unable to understand him.”102 Nonetheless, Hull was aware that Kuhn’s perspective had been distorted and abused. When scientists were confronted, they could plead incommensurability. And social relativists had utilized the same argument in an attempt to undermine the authority of science. Where social relativists assumed Kuhn was arguing that positivists were wrong for claiming evidence was important, they relied on case studies to support their argument. Hull waxed philosophical when he argued, “To be consistent, social relativists must view appeals to evidence both in science and in the study of science as rhetorical strategies designed to take advantage of the biases of the time.” He continued:

Only one further alternative exists—evidence just might play a significant role both in science and in the study of science. On one reading of Kuhn, this exactly what he proposed in calling for the larger involvement of the history of science in the philosophy of science. It also explains all the energy that he invested in studying science. …more traditional philosophers of science have come to conclude that their early, highly critical reaction to Kuhn was too one-sided.103

This “critical reaction” made sense of that fact that Kuhn was denied the recognition that his influence suggested. Hull explained:

The fact that many younger, less influential philosophers (including myself) were elected president of the Philosophy of Science Association before Kuhn was elected in 1998, indicates both the early reservations that philosophers had about Kuhn’s philosophy and the change of heart that had occurred. (I still remember Kuhn taking me to one side after he was installed as president, to ask my advice about which person would be right for which committee. He really did not know very much about others in the association except for their publications.)104

Hull’s position as an insider—and as a younger peer— uniquely provided him with a specific insight that bridged disciplinary and generational gaps. He concluded, “What I find amazing…is that one person could have influenced so many different sorts of people in so many different ways. I suspect a hundred years from now, Kuhn will be one of the few philosophers of science who will be looked back upon as having radically changed our understanding of science.”105 June Z. Fullmer wrote a late memorial for Technology and Culture in 1998.106 The article opened by mentioning that a Slovenian newspaper had run a long obituary for Kuhn on the day of his departure. Fullmer acknowledged, “Tom Kuhn, privately mourned, was also lost to a wide public.”107 Although she immediately mentioned Structure—and how art historians and Rabbis cited the text—Fullmer moved on to Kuhn’s intellectual contributions. She stated, “Tom’s achievement was not immediate; his reputation grew with each publication.” Then the article proceeded to describe his professional accomplishments in a linear and uninterrupted manner. The article’s closing statement was most enlightening. Fullmer wrote, “Reflecting on the influence Tom’s work has had on us, we realize that what he wrote was, plausibly, and to a very great extent autobiographical.”108 The History of Science Society Newsletter did not deal with Kuhn’s passing until October in “Memories of Tom Kuhn.”109 Jed Z. Buchwald, its author decided to discuss his own autobiographical experience as a colleague and student of Kuhn. Consequently, the obituary dealt with his undergraduate studies at Princeton when, during his freshmen year, Buchwald took a yearlong history course with Kuhn, which was unexpectedly intense. He spent another year as a research assistant. This memorial provided a first hand account of how driven the professor Kuhn was and how this how a contagious affect upon his students, at least Buchwald. The article noted that in Kuhn’s later years he had a difficult time during historical research. It seemed he did not like reading secondary sources and

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was disinclined to spend time with archival materials. According to Buchwald, Kuhn’s move to MIT in 1979 was indicative of his primary interest, philosophy.110 J.L. Heilbron, a former student of Kuhn’s, wrote the “News of the Profession” for Isis in 1998.111 This particular journal was a special edition with several articles that in some form or another related to Kuhn, his thought, or his intellectual influence. Heilbron noted that Kuhn “was the most influential analyst of scientific development during that later twentieth century.” He went on to claim:

[Structure] made ‘paradigm shift’ as common and misused a metaphor as ‘quantum leap’ and ‘critical mass.’ Its achieved what few philosophical books have done. It simultaneously instructed a wide academic public and a specialist community. 112

Moving on to explain the content of Structure, Heilbron stated, “The view that science, like other thought systems, advances or retreats through rhetoric or persuasion, not by logical necessity, was a revelation to people who had never practiced or studied its history.”113 As a result, the text’s ability to create skepticism and undermine the accepted notion of the production of scientific knowledge appeared to grant it a broad audience. According to Heilbron, Kuhn had not written the text in order to gain a popular audience.114 Instead, he was more interested in the epistemological questions, which were the logical consequence of arguing that paradigms gained dominance through persuasion or power. However, his audience responded to the diverse concerns that they brought to the text. Heilbron explained:

The book comforted social scientists who wanted to assimilate their disciplines to physics, Luddites who blamed social problems on scientists and engineers, and everyone who rejected authority. It repelled philosophers of science at which it was aimed for the good reason that it undercut their belief that scientific knowledge advances by the application of rational criteria to the products of observation and experiment.115

The rest of the obituary discussed the development of Kuhn’s academic career in relation to the construction and publication of Structure. It continued for ten pages discussing the intricacies and evolution Kuhn’s theories. Heilbron concluded, “Kuhn had the genius to find the words and sketch the concepts that made important old philosophical problems relevant to the public and newly discussable by philosophers. He had the strength of mind and commitments to lead the discussion.”116 Paradigms and Revolutions 1980

Paradigms and Revolutions was a collection of essays written by scholars in diverse academic disciplines

concerning the effect of Structure on their work. Gary Gutting, the editor, claimed, “Thomas Kuhn’s [Structure] has had a wider academic influence than any other single book of the last twenty years.”117 Beginning with this justification, the text’s editor proceeded to bring together works that spoke to the formidable influence of the text. For Gutting, this project was important, because “[Structure] is about the authority of science, [which] is very important because science is the only recognized cognitive authority in the world today.”118 He explained that Kuhn’s text had engaged a diverse readership due to his deconstruction of the authority of scientific knowledge, which was found either “plausible or challenging” by most of its readers.119 World Changes and Reconstruction Scientific Revolutions 1993

Two texts were published in 1993 that were of great significance to the perpetuation of Kuhnian scholarship. World Changes120 was the result of a conference that took place at M.I.T. in May 1990. The colloquium gathered philosophers, historians, and sociologists of science to discuss the old philosophy of science and the new philosophy of science, which had been “promoted by Kuhn, Hanson, Feyerabend, Toulmin, and Lakatos.”121 According to Paul Horwich:

The [traditional and] compelling picture of how things are supposed to work in science was once taken for granted, but for the last thirty years, thanks to Thomas Kuhn and [Structure], that has no longer been so. Kuhn’s critique called into the question many of the central elements of the traditional picture—the concept of absolute truth, the observation/theory distinction, the determinacy of rational choice, and the normative

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function of philosophy of science—and it provided an alternative model of scientific change that dispensed with these notions altogether. 122

The editor explained that though Kuhn’s “radical views” had been central to debates across the academy, therefore the text included commentary from the relevant experts123. None of these parties had arrived at a conclusion regarding the integrity of these theories. However, according to reviewer Stathis Psillos, “[World Changes] set Kuhn’s philosophy in a broader philosophical perspective and attempts to appraise his views with respect to a broad array of philosophical issues.”124 In light of the fact that World Changes and Reconstructing Scientific Revolutions125 were published the same year, Psillos reviewed both texts in the same review for the British Journal for the Philosophy of Science.126 Th article began with a survey of Structure and reviewing Kuhn’s argument and argued, “[It] was bound to cause a great stir among the prevalent philosophical views of science and historiographical techniques.” Of course, this statement required contextualization. The reviewer added:

Philosophers of the most divergent persuasions have taken pains to spell out the commitments of and eventually repudiate the emergent Kuhnian image of science. The most standard line of philosophical critique involved the charges of irrationalism and relativism. Kuhn’s philosophy—generations of students have been told—deprives science of its distinctive gown.127

Psillos went to compare Kuhn’s conversion-like gestalt switch to the conversion of Saul of Tarsus to the Apostle Paul of the New Testament. Although Kuhn had denied the charges leveled against him, components of the text—and Kuhn’s experiential motivation for writing the Structure—offer these types of interpretations. The reviewer claimed that Reconstructing Scientific Revolutions served as a gauge of Kuhn’s development from the initial publication of Structure. Psillos felt that Paul Hoyningen-Huene’s efforts were noteworthy, especially since Kuhn had given his stamp of approval in the text’s introduction. This book was composed from the author’s evaluation of Kuhn’s articles, books, essays, and talks related to the theories provided in Structure. In the first half of Reconstructing Scientific Revolutions, Hoyningen-Huene examined the philosophical underpinnings of Kuhn’s argument. In an astonished tone the reviewer stated, “This is a task Kuhn has never systematically performed.”128 The other important aspect of the text was that it revealed that Kuhn never provided a comprehensive theory of meaning in Structure, which is resolved through Hoyningen-Huene’s efforts. He also refined Kuhn’s paradigm with the phrases “lexicon” and “lexical structure.” Psillos stated, “Reconstructing Scientific Revolutions puts an order to Kuhn’s latest views.”129 He concluded, “All and All, [it] pushes ahead the philosophical frontiers and does justice to the complex and evolving thought of one of the most influential and controversial philosophers of science of this century.”130 Peter Barker reviewed Reconstructing Scientific Revolutions for Isis in 1994. The tone of the review expressed Barker’s excitement over the “systematic presentation of Thomas Kuhn’s ideas about science.”131 He felt that this text resolved issues of misinterpretation and ignorance of Kuhn’s attempts to expand the ideas presented in Structure. The reviewer was adamant about the latter point. Barker proclaimed, “Kuhn did not stop writing in 1970, although to read most philosophical presentations of his work one might think he did.”132 In the concluding paragraph he noted that Kuhn had not withdrawn from the philosophical discourse, but had been developing his ideas over a thirty-year period. Barker closed, “Kuhn has moved far into uncharted territory, with few companions.”133 In 1994 Tim Jordan of the University of East London reviewed Reconstructing Scientific Revolutions for the British Journal for the History Science.134 Jordan contradicted others in terms of his estimation of the value of the book. He began by acknowledging that it was a correction of Kuhn’s ideas that were primarily from Structure. He argued that corrections were “systematic exposition of Kuhn’s main concepts, [which are incommensurability, paradigms, and normal science.]”135 Jordan is the only reviewer that made it clear that “While Reconstructing Scientific Revolutions is not for a beginner, discussion being couched at a high level of philosophical abstraction, it surveys Kuhn’s thought clearly, identifies problems and proposes plausible solutions [sic].”136 But he challenged:

[Who] will be interested in reading it? The audience appears quite small; advanced, because the arguments are complex and abstract, philosophers of science who can be expected to know Kuhn’s work already and so will mainly be interested in Hoyningen-Huene’s corrections of Kuhn. The audience is therefore advanced philosophers of science who are currently concerned with problems raised by Kuhn’s 1962 book.137

The review made clear the initial problem with Structure is that it was an attempt to deal with too many disciplines and disciplinary guidelines. Jordan cautioned, “Anyone else, especially students, would be well-advised to read

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Kuhn himself.”138 He concluded, “At its best Reconstructing Scientific Revolutions is a lucid account and correction of one of the most influential philosophers of science, at its worst it is an irrelevant exercise in scholasticism.”139 THE ESSENTIAL TENSION

The Essential Tension (1977)140 was a collection of independent essays, which had for the most part had

been previously published. Harvey Siegel provided a review of the text for The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science.141 He saw the work as a means to monitor “the progress and status of the discussion Kuhn’s work has spawned.”142 In other words, it was an additional response from Kuhn to criticisms of Structure. His critics had argued that it “portrays the process of theory choice as irrational and subjective, and…threatens the philosophical ideals of rationality and objectivity [in science.]”143 The latest text was an extension of its predecessor in that Kuhn addressed his critics and continued to articulate “interrelated issues of objectivity, rationality, incommensurability and relativism.”144 The preface discussed the evolution of Kuhn’s ideas about history, philosophy, and science in an autobiographical mode. This included a lengthy story about his gestalt-switch from Newtonian to Aristotelian physics.145 This transformation came for Kuhn in 1947, when he was assisting Conant in preparing lectures for his undergraduate General Education on 17th century physics. This required him to understand earlier physics, which led him to read Aristotle’s Physica. Kuhn was perplexed, because he viewed Aristotle’s work through Newton’s physics. He stated:

How could [Aristotle’s] characteristic talent have deserted him so systematically when he turned to the study of motion and mechanics? Equally, if his talents had deserted him, why had his writings in physics been taken so seriously for so many centuries after his death? …Suddenly the fragments in my headed sorted themselves out in a new way, and fell into place altogether. My jaw dropped with surprise, for all at once Aristotle seemed a very good physicist indeed, but of a sort I’d never dreamed possible.”146

Kuhn’s revelation was a product of contextualization. He understood that, in Aristotle’s world, change of quality was a consideration. Kuhn argued:

More consequential was my recognition that the permanent ingredients of Aristotle’s universe, its ontologically primary and indestructible elements, were not material bodies but rather the qualities which, when imposed on some portion of omnipresent neutral matter, constituted an individual material body or substance.147

It was this paradigm switch that diverted Kuhn’s intellectual path from theoretical physics to the history of sciences. (In the Neusis discussion, he mentioned that philosophy interested him as an undergraduate and graduate student he had taken courses in the subject. However, Kuhn did not enjoy the courses.

The Essential Tension was divided in two parts. The first section was “Historiograhic Studies” and the second was “Metahistorical studies.” It consisted of fourteen different essays. Only two of the essays had not been published. The diversity of subject ranged from “The Relations Between the History and Philosophy of Science to “A Function for Thought Experiments” to “Comment on the Relations of Science and Art.” This breadth of topics offered reading for the specialist and non-specialists. One can deduce from the preface that Kuhn was concerned with “mopping-up” the collateral damage that resulted from the time that the theories in Structure were introduced and clarification of his arguments for the so-called ‘Kuhnians.’148 The essays in Section One discussed “the fundamental conceptual readjustment required of the historian to recapture the past.” Another topic is the necessity of understanding the “changes in the conception, and relative, importance of that notion in physical science from Aristotle to the present; and in the relationship between the notion of cause and that of explanation or explanatory power.”149 Kuhn also presented essays on the relationship between internal and external factors in physics and the history of science. Finally, through the first, fifth, and sixth papers the text “provid[ed] a clear and unified account of the relations between various academic disciplines—philosophy of science, history and history of science—that Kuhn’s theoretical [drew] upon.”150 According to Siegel, “the essays in Part Two move from the historical to the Metahistorical and in several cases allow the reader to follow Kuhn’s intellectual biography, as theses formulated in Structure evolved and developed in Kuhn’s thinking.”151 The germs of the Structure were present in the first two essays of this section.” The Essential Tension,” the essay, elaborated on the roles of normal science during mundane conditions and when paradigms are challenged i.e. scientific revolutions. Essays eleven, twelve, and thirteen were pieces in which Kuhn responded to his critics through discussing objectivity, rationality, relativism, and incommensurability. This section

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also discussed the role of thought experiments. At the end, Kuhn tagged on an essay that dealt with a comparison between art and science. Siegel was primarily interested in essays eleven, twelve and thirteen. Essay number thirteen was Kuhn’s response to the accusation that he made science subjective. The reviewer had nothing but praise for most of the collection. He stated, “I should like to say that the essays thus far enumerated (other than eleven, twelve and thirteen)…are by and large full of insight, and demonstrate fully the importance of Kuhn’s work.” However, Siegel concluded that these essays did “little to clarify or make plausible his original treatment of [objectivity, rationality, relativism, and incommensurability] .”152 This comment referred back to the initial charge against Kuhn and his imputing irrationality to the sciences. The irrationalism imputed to Kuhn was based on his view that paradigm choice was not a rational one, which was based on reasoned decisions in response to empirical data. This conclusion was arrived at based on the incommensurability between paradigms. Siegel argued:

Incommensurability—the inability of competing paradigms to be directly compared, or judged according to a neutral standard—stems from Kuhn’s contention that a paradigm contains its own criteria of evaluation, as well as laws and methods of application. During debate according to Kuhn, competing paradigms are evaluated according to paradigm-bound criteria of evaluation. Since there are no paradigm neutral criteria of evaluation; because of incommensurability, there are no paradigm-neutral criteria of evaluation, paradigm debate can rely on no objective criteria of evaluation of paradigms; hence paradigm debate is irrational. The irrationality thesis thus rests on incommensurability, which in turn rests on paradigm-bound nature of criteria of evaluation of paradigms.153

He reminded his readers that several historians and philosophers of science have found the irrationality thesis problematic. Siegel relied on excerpts from Scheffler’s Science and Subjectivity (1967)154 to make his point. Then he went on to cite Kordig and Scheffler in his explication of Kuhn’s argument—past and present. Siegel’s thoroughly demonstrated that though Kuhn seemed to retract aspects of his argument on the irrationality of thesis, he continued to argue that discussions between scientists in different paradigm deteriorated due to the incommensurability. He explained:

Kuhn ‘seems unwilling to abandon “incommensurability” while trying, unsuccessfully, to assert that communication and comparison are possible.’ Kuhn seems to want it both ways: he wants to maintain incommensurability (and so irrationality), yet deny irrationality and allow for communication between proponents of competing paradigms (thus giving up incommensurability). It is clear, I hope, that Kuhn cannot have it both ways.155

He explained, “[in reviewing] the early debate between Kuhn and his [critics] over the objectivity of theory choice. We have seen that Kuhn’s early response [were] unconvincing.”156 Siegel concluded that Kuhn’s historiographical works were excellent, but “concerning incommensurability and the objectivity of theory choice in science… [his] response does little to render his view plausible. His position remains both confusing and confused.”157 Sir Peter Medawar, physician and researcher, reviewed The Essential Tension for Nature.158 He began by stating that scientists where generally too preoccupied with their own work to notice philosophical discourse, so when figures like Popper and Kuhn gain notoriety in their circles “it is a sure sign that he may have something sensible and helpful to say.”159 Medawar continued in a comparison of the theorists throughout the short review. For example, he stated, “[From the eleventh essay, one] will learn that the views of Kuhn and Popper, so far from being wholly antithetical, have much in common…[In fact,] Kuhn writes as if he imputed to Popper the notion that the tests of an hypothesis is a…private transaction between the scientist and reality.” However, Medawar does not end on such a humorous note. The review almost appeared written tongue in cheek. Medawar noted J.W.N. Watkins observation that Kuhn seemed to think that the enterprise of science was congruent to religion. Therefore, “the supplanting of one paradigm for another might…be thought of as a confused and anxious period marked with shrill cries of heresy and schism.” However, he argued that though Kuhn’s ideas had psychological value, he over emphasized historical at the expense of daily scientific experience. In Medawar’s estimation, “day-to day” science was nothing like Kuhn’s “humdrum” normal science. At this point the scientist drew on his own experiences in contracting Kuhn.” Nonetheless, he concluded, “Kuhn has the unmistakable address of a man who, so far from wanting to score points is anxious above all else to get at the truth of matters.”160 Janet A. Kournay, philosopher, took a different approach in her review for Isis.161 She felt the text had “considerable value, which lay in The Essential Tension making accessible several of Kuhn’s essays in one volume.

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Kournay focused on a segment of the preface in which Kuhn compared the activity of historians to philosophers. She noted:

The goal of most historical research is a narrative about particulars of the past, one that is forged from a vast amount of primary source material that renders ‘plausible and comprehensible the events it describes.’ Thee goal of most philosophical activity, on the other hand is ‘what is true at all times and place, ‘ where such ‘explicit generalizations’ are typically forged by a kind of Socratic analysis and criticism of alternative positions. But these differences between the two enterprises are so ‘deep and consequential’ that ‘no one can practice them both at the same time.’162

However, Kournay exposed Kuhn’s tendency to contradict himself. She noted:

And that being granted, most of the book’s essays, concerned as they are to portray the structure of scientific development ‘at all times and places—of paradigms and normal science, of scientific discovery, crisis, and revolutionary science—shot through, as they are, with generalization and argumentation…are best classified as ‘philosophical studies.’163

The reviewer provided no final analysis for the text, besides mentioning that Kuhn had not addressed several “of the criticisms that have been leveled at Kuhn’s view of science over the years for its alleged historical shortcomings.”164 And Kournay suggested did this was unfortunate, because Kuhn was most suited to adequately deal with them. “Postscript”

Alan Musgrave discussed “Kuhn’s Second Thoughts”165 in the British Journal of Philosophy of Science, which examined the addendum that Kuhn included in the 1970 publication of the text. Kuhn’s thirty-six page “Postscript”166 revaluated his earlier conception of paradigms and scientific communities. Musgrave’s dissection of “Postscript” suggested that Kuhn was experiencing intellectual schizophrenia. He commented Kuhn’s concern for the “circularity involved in defining a paradigm as that which members of a scientific group share, and then defining the group by its shared paradigm.”167 Musgrave noted that most philosophers of science are not concerned with the sociological aspects of science. But, if philosophers were interested in sociological questions, then the internal aspects of science would precede its sociological dimensions. And concluded that formations of scientific communities are a function of “different problems, theories and techniques.”168

After drawing attention to the fact that Kuhn was aware that his argument about the relationship between paradigms and scientific communities was a circular argument, he argued Kuhn’s approach was supported by the proliferation of sociological interest in the process of individuation of scientific groups. However, these sociological studies ignored the professional activities of the scientist. Musgrave mentioned that Kuhn had provided evidence that sociologists had taken up the tasks of objectively defining scientific communities. Then he pointed out that one of Kuhn’s sources was honest enough to confess ignorance of internal activities and the members of the groups that were studied.169

Musgrave discussed Kuhn’s sociological sources, which he had cited in “Postscript,” and their techniques in a disparaging manner. When providing an example he commented, “[Price and Beaver studied] membership lists, preprints and other memos…Diane Lane locates the members of her group by taking all the names listed by the compiler of a bibliography [and] Kessler achieved [similar results] using the Scientific Citation Index.” Finally, Musgrave mocked, “The sociologists to whom Kuhn refers us take pride in what they call the ‘objectivity’ of their methods…These sociologist of science take pride, then, in their curious ‘objectivity,’ that is paying no attention to the scientific content of the activities of the scientists they study.”170 Afterwards, that Kuhn’s suggested approach contradicted the methods of these sociologists.

Musgrave also points out the peculiarity of sociologists who labeled studies that neglected the internal aspects of science as “objective.”171 He also found their language ironic.172 The review noted that the concepts contained in Structure led intellectuals, to examine modes of transmitting knowledge, consensus maintenance, and structures of preparation. Musgrave condemned this curious approach to understanding science and clarified that Kuhn had never condoned or suggested these practices.173 He noted that Kuhn emphasized the internal aspects of the enterprise emphasizing the role that education and practical training serve in support of the development of cohesive of scientific communities.174

The methods of sociological investigation Kuhn modeled in “Postscript,” by citing sociologists specifically interested in science, had undermined his position. Due to the sociologists neglecting to thoroughly examine that data used in determining group membership. Consequently, Musgrave questioned the validity of Kuhn’s

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sociological approach. He thought “Postscript,” itself, was an excellent example of how weakness of such an approach, because in it Kuhn cited all his critics. Therefore, if a sociologist were to base their conclusions on these citations, then Kuhn would be counted among the philosophers of science, who castigated his work. In actuality, it was the controversy over Structure that necessitated these citations, one that defined Kuhn outside of the field of philosophy. In this manner Musgrave demonstrated that Kuhn’s argument was weak due to a lack of critical analysis of internal considerations, i.e. such an approach would have been placed among the castigating critics.

Musgrave also noted Kuhn’s ideological matrix dissolved due to the manner in which he had addressed the earliest construction of normal science—that philosophers of science—found problematic. Kuhn had stated, “’[that] several difficulties which have been foci for critical attention are likely to vanish.’” But Musgrave concluded, “What …emerges clearly from Kuhn’s present writing [is an understanding of the growth of knowledge that] he does not know, and perhaps never did, subscribe.”175

“Postscript” had also introduced a new element that resolved concerns about universal ideological harmony that normal science suggested. This new understanding built the consensus of the community around the paradigms that governed normal science. Now rivaling paradigms dissolved consensus, which led to the micro-community. Therefore, “whole sciences need no longer be given over, for long periods, to the articulation of a single universally accepted paradigm.” This allowed for the proliferation of differing opinions that Kuhn’s critics required. Musgrave noted that Kuhn has wavered on his stance and this appeared to be a post-Structure pattern.176

Kuhn had also retracted and revised his consideration regarding the amount of dissension that existed between micro-communities. This unit of community was formed around shared investigative concerns.177 Through speculating about the amount of disagreement across micro communities, which he first declared were rare. Musgrave noted that in the first publication of Structure Kuhn had doubted that his critics could provide a theory that replaced the role of normal science in the transformative process.178 He had now conceded, “that different micro-communities quarreled over theories of matter.”179 These concessions—combined with the resignation that members of the same community did not always agree—unhinged his theory of an overarching paradigm governing normal science.180

Kuhn’s revised description of science that allowed for disagreement or quarreling—within and without communities—did not necessitate the discipline-wrenching revolutions that were a part of the initial publication of Structure. This new perception of the structure of scientific change conceded that differing factors, which took place at varying degrees, transformed Kuhn’s earlier argument. Transformation seems the most fitting term, because the traditional progressive notion of scientific change was no longer acceptable in the Kuhnian matrix. In “Postscript,” Kuhn confessed that the response of scientists to anomalies was not as programmed as he first “believed.”181 Musgrave responded that Kuhn has somehow developed a “Kuhnian-Popperian” view, because he “[initially] misconstrued [paradigms] as the unquestioned basis of normal science—[when] actually they are continually brought into question by anomalies.”182 Kuhn had also developed the recognition that agreement was not based on a shared metaphysical understanding. The only initial component that remained of normal science was the fact that it was normal science was “still” firmly founded on paradigms. 183

Musgrave went into a complex dissection of the new view of paradigm presented in the 1970 addendum. In short, Kuhn had transformed the paradigm into the disciplinary matrix and divided it into two components. The first sense, being sociological, deals with “’the entire constellation of beliefs values, techniques, and so on, shared by members of a given community.’”184 Musgrave fell into a condescending tone when discussing this new aspect in the definition of paradigms, as Kuhn included religious values and the enjoyment of recreational drugs as consideration of shared values.185

Kuhn explained that the other, and less social, side of paradigms are exemplars. Musgrave summarized the role of these examples, when writing, “Textbooks confront the student with exemplary problem-solutions, and invite him to work out similar problems for himself.”186 In other words, exemplars are the non-social core of the scientific education, which formed the cognition, metaphysical understanding, and psychological perspective of the scientist. Beyond a scientist’s neophyte stage, “’[An exemplar provides] the ability to recognize a given situation as like some but unlike others that were seen before [through neural programming that took place through the education, indoctrination, and training phase].”187

“Postscript” also discussed a few of the details that were neglected in the first edition of Structure. This discussion laid bare the development of Kuhn’s thought. The review primarily discussed Kuhn’s interest in the psychological impact that training under a particular group of exemplars or a paradigm has upon the perception of a discipline’s initiates. However, Musgrave noted that Kuhn does not thoroughly deal with the criticism that the psychological aspects of training and practice are “unanalyzable and irrational.”188 In other words, the founding of change on psychology did not grant the investigator access to an aspect of the mechanism of change, because it took place through a “conversion experience.”189

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Musgrave also noted Kuhn’s attempt to “clarify” his stance on progress or revolution in relation to incommensurability. He doubted that Kuhn allowed for the common notion of scientific progress in his theoretical framework and questioned Kuhn’s distinction between progress and the movement towards “’truth likeness.’”190 This demarcation distinguished Kuhn from Popper. In that Kuhn argued that it was nature and not logic provided a discipline’s puzzles and solutions. The power of a puzzle was revealed in how it dealt with and provided models nature.191 Popper postulates the formation and power lie in the theory, which drew closer to the truth.192

The reviewer also argued that Kuhn’s attempt to erase the notion that incommensurability was relativistic. Instead, Kuhn, once again, relied on psychological effects of learning under a particular exemplar, which was based on the understanding that language and perspective are different.193 Kuhn attempted to bridge the gulf that he had created between ideological irreconcilable parties through the dismissal of the “conversion experience” and employing the phrase “persuasion” for conversion.194 However, he back-peddled when suggesting the scientist “’go native’” when they want to completely understand the opposing party.195 Musgrave criticizes this as “having components of the conversion experience” that was philosophers had initially found problematic by philosophers.196

In the final analysis, Musgrave found “Postscript” a bit more tame and lacking the punch of Structure. Although many of the theories are the same, the new exposition was “but a pale reflection of the old, revolutionary Kuhn, [because] the earlier Kuhn “claim[ed] that by following [the community structure of science and to compare it with the community structure of other disciplines] we would overthrow many of our cherished ideas about the nature of science.”197 Musgrave reinterpreted this promise in light of “Postscript” and concludes that to follow Kuhn’s suggestion “will merely acquaint us with rather humdrum sociological aspects of what many of us already thought [took] place.”198 Musgrave’s critique suggests that Kuhn had become wishy-washy in his understanding of the structure of scientific expansion and began to make concessions that he did not necessarily support, but brought his theories more in line with the harmonious enterprise of science that philosophers support. CRITICISM AND THE GROWTH OF KNOWLEDGE 1970

Criticism and The Growth of Knowledge (1970)199—which will be called Criticism from here on—is a collection of the papers presented at the 1965 International Colloquium in Philosophy of Science in manuscript form. The meeting took place in London during the month of July. Consequently, Criticism was primarily a discussion of Structure in relation to the philosophy of science. In light of these philosophical concerns in regard to Kuhn in relation to the logical positivists, the text was a distillation of the intellectual mugging of Kuhn. The colloquium opened with a talk from Kuhn that was titled “Logic of Discovery or Psychology of Research”, which was a comparison of Kuhn’s understanding of the development of science, as shown in Structure, with that of Popper. The talks and speakers that followed his presentation were “Against ‘Normal Science’” given by Watkins; “Does the Distinction between Normal and Revolutionary Science Hold?” by Toulmin; “Normal Science and its Dangers” given by Williams; “Normal Science and its Dangers” given by Popper; “The Nature of the Paradigm” given by Masterman; “Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes” given by Lakatos; “Consolations for the Specialist” given by Feyerabend, which was followed by Kuhn’s closing comments titled, “Reflections on my Critics.” The tone of the colloquium was evident from the titles of the talks, especially Kuhn’s closing statements.

The reviews of the text also resonate with the tone of this fiery meeting. R.G.A. Dolby prepared the review for the British Journal for the History of Science in 1971.200 He described the book:

This book takes the form of an exchange between T.S. Kuhn and K.R. Popper and his supporters. It begins with a paper by Kuhn, characterizing and commenting on the differences between his own position and Popper’s. The main part of the book is taken up with criticizing Kuhn’s philosophy, and there is a final evaluation, “Reflection on my Critics” by Kuhn. The book show[s] two philosophical positions in dialogue on live and interesting problems. It also shows the tendency in such discussions for the participants to talk past one another, as they reveal their preoccupation with rather different issues.201

He explained that Popperian philosophy was the “preoccupation” of most of the speakers.202 Dolby that Feyerabend felt that normal science—in the context of Structure—described both science and organized crime. He noted that Kuhn and Masterman were friendly colleagues, which explained how her criticism of the multitudinous notions of paradigm doubled as its development.203 However, for the most part, the meeting seemed an intense attempt to exchange philosophical perception in relation to the nature of the enterprise of science. The greater parts of the participants of the meeting were skeptical on most points of Kuhn’s argument. It began with Kuhn, as usual, discussing how his personal experience, i.e. understanding Aristotelian physics as

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Aristotle through a psychological methodology, supported his philosophical efforts.204 Popper expressed his disappointment with Kuhn’s reliance on psychology and sociology. And Williams declaring, “We simply do not know enough to permit a philosophical structure to be erected on a historical foundation.”205 According to Dolby, aside or Masterman, it appeared that the disparate views represented were almost irreconcilable in terms of the actual discourse, which is evidenced in the participants “talk[ing] past one another.”206

In the end, the reviewer suggested that there seemed a movement towards reconciliation. Dolby stated, “In spite of mutual misunderstandings one interesting feature of the book is the extent to which the two sides move towards one another.”207 Kuhn ended by explaining, “He has turned to very similar issues to those of the one Popperian philosophers, and has come up with very similar answers.”208 Similarly, Lakatos had “presented as a natural development of Popper’s position a methodology which directs itself to providing a rational account of scientific change.” The review concluded, “The two positions come so close, that one wonders with Kuhn, how far the remaining differences are just the result of misunderstanding.”209

The Isis review was not as optimistic.210 Mario F. Del Carril, noted that the editors went beyond reporting the 1965 international colloquium in an attempt to represent “ a confrontation between the views of …Popper and …Kuhn on the development and the growth to of knowledge. [As a result,] the spirit of confrontation is present in some of the essays critical of the Kuhnian view.”211 The review noted Kuhn’s remarking that this clash modeled ‘the discourse between participants in incommensurable points of view…[providing] a developed example of a minor cultural clash.’212

After explaining Kuhn’s theoretical model, as presented in Structure, Del Carril stated, “It is such a picture of the growth of scientific knowledge as a not totally rational natural process which offends many of Kuhn’s critics.”213 He continued:

Is such offense just an effect of a confrontation between two incommensurable points of view—as Kuhn suggests—or is it a consequence of quite commensurable objections to the historical accuracy, methodological import, and ideological implications of Kuhn’s portrait of the growth of scientific knowledge—as many of Kuhn’s Popperian and non-Popperian critics insist?214

In the final analysis, Del Carril concluded that Criticism did not get to the root of the problems presented by the emerging paradigms. It seemed that Kuhn’s plead of incommensurability was found bothersome by the reviewer, who asked, “Can philosophy survive the universal acceptance of such alternatives?”215 The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science provided an extensive eight-page review of the text. It was titled “Science, History, and Methodology”216 and was written by J.J. C. Smart. The article was quite philosophical in nature, therefore inconsequential to this project. Smart felt compelled to meditate on the relationship between history and philosophy of science in response to reading this text. Although the reviewer was “skeptical of the value of so juxtaposing history and philosophy…[m]any philosophers of science…do seem to think that we can learn from history of science what is the right way to go about science now and in the future.”217 He felt that all the conflict of approaches were a result of Popper’s Poverty of Historicism, which consequently set the tone of his meditative, and primarily philosophical review.218 The article focused on Lakatos’ response. Criticism and the second edition of Structure were published during the same year, which resulted in Shapere reviewing both for Science in 1971. We will restrict our discussion to the reviewer’s comments on Structure.219 This review focused on Kuhn’s new definition of the paradigm, which had bifurcated.220 More importantly, Kuhn retreated in his earlier relativistic explanation of scientific advance. His revision was “like biological [evolution], a unidirectional, and irreversible process.”221 Shapere was also disappointed with Kuhn’s response to his former description of incommensurability, Because he seemed to waver back and forth when stating scientists ‘do not see the same stimuli, but ‘ the stimuli that impinge on [them] are the same.’222 Shapere concluded, “Kuhn appears to have retreated from his earlier position in just those respects in which it was most suggestive, important, influential, and influential, and to have retained aspects which many have felt were the most objectionable feature of his earlier view.’223 In closing, the reviewer pointed out, “[Kuhn’s] denies the objectivity and rationality of the scientific enterprise…[through] arguments [that] are unclear and unsatisfactory.”224 EARLY CRITICISMS

The earliest criticisms of Structure suggest that early on scholars sensed the text’s significance to the future of history, philosophy, and sociology of science. However, It was philosophers of science, who thought that Structure not only contradicted their understanding of theoretical framework, but also was irrational in its description of the growth of knowledge in the natural sciences. From this vantage point at the beginning of the

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twenty-first century, it appears that the focused criticism of the philosophical community represented a frustrated attempt of scholars to completely dismiss Kuhn’s the prevailing Popperian philosophy of science of the period.

Likewise, it now appears that Structure represented an emerging paradigm and the subsequent volatile discourse was predictive of future influence of Kuhn’s theories. The intention of reviewing the criticism of the text has been to contextualize its evolution to becoming the only text in the history of science that is presently considered a contemporary classic across the disciplines. The first reviewers of Structure were Charles Gillespie, a Princeton historian, Bernard Barber, a sociologist from Columbia, Marie Boas Hall, of the University of Indiana, Mary Hesse from Cambridge, H.V. Stopes-Roe of Birmingham, and Joseph Agassi of Boston University.

Gillespie wrote the earliest review of Structure for Science in 1962. Therefore, he was the first to note Kuhn’s academic genealogy and describe him as “physicist-turned-historian.”225 He was clear in his assessment that Structure was not “history of science proper.” He noted the text’s cross-disciplinary construction when he explained, “[Kuhn’s] essay is an argument about the nature of science, drawn in part from its history but also, in certain essential elements, from considerations of psychology, sociology, philosophy, and physics.”226 This notation revealing the unusual nature of the text.

Gillispie also felt that it was necessary to note that Kuhn’s philosophical explanations were unconventional. He wrote, “The reader is not to expect philosophy of science in the usual Anglo-American sense of a study of logical problems found in scientific proceedings or systems.”227 Gillispie steered away from arriving at any strong conclusions about the work. He closed, “It is not for a historian of science to pass judgment on the central critique of Kuhn’s essay.”228 And added that due to the “searching” nature of the essay much criticism was anticipated.229

Hall was more conservative, and brief, in her review for American Historical Review in 1963. She emphasized that Structure was primarily an explanation of the processes that allowed science to move forward during an inevitable period of crisis. In the end, Hall recommended the text as useful for teaching novices to the history of science. The brevity and nonchalant nature of Hall’s review, among other things, suggested that Structure was common or unremarkable.

In 1963, Barber wrote the review of Structure for the American Sociological Review. He exclaimed,” One of the happier recent developments for the sociology of science is that the newer generation of historians of science has become more and more quasi-sociological.” Barber continued, “[These] works are so nearly oriented to the explicit theoretical concerns of the sociologist that only the least effort is required to show how they exemplify or develop those sociological concerns.”230 He also noted Kuhn’s awareness the role of sociology and social psychology in the enterprise of science. Barber’s expertise led him to conclude, “Kuhn’s book is offered as an essay in the sociology of scientific discovery. ”231 However, he felt that Structure had not completely dealt with external factors. As a result concluded “[Kuhn’s] sociological analysis of the process of scientific discovery was not as theoretically explicit as we might wish it, nor does it include some sociological factors that would improve his analysis by enlarging it.”232

In the 1963 review for Isis, Mary Hesse announced, “this is an important book." She also was clear on the fact that Kuhn’s historiography was complex and constructed with diverse academic consideration in mind. Almost paraphrasing Gillispie she stated, “[Kuhn] has assembled from various quarters truisms which previously did not quite fit and exhibited them in a new pattern in terms of which our whole image of science is transformed.”233 Hesse anticipated the philosophical rejection of Structure. She concluded, “My own impression is that Kuhn’s thesis...will find easier acceptance among historians than among philosophers.”234

Philosopher H.V. Stopes-Roe’s 1964 review of Structure for the British Journal of the Philosophy of Science disparaged both Kuhn and the text. As many have since him, Stopes-Roe noted the “enthusiasm and vitality” in Kuhn’s writing.235 Nonetheless, the philosopher warned, “[Kuhn’s] enthusiasm leads him to over-state his novelties in a way that prejudices the appreciation of those things he has to say.”236 Stopes-Roe conclusion almost mirrored Hall’s. However, he added a caution in the statement, “And I would wholeheartedly endorse its great value to beginning students—though I hope they will be warned that it gives a misleading picture of modern history of the historiography of science. It will be a good exercise for them to discuss the author’s excesses.”237 In 1966, Agassi felt it was necessary to discuss the Kuhn’s complex educational background in order to review Structure. His explanation suggested that the text represented a reaction—on the part of Kuhn—to his training as a physicist. Agassi also revealed that the structure was the fruit of Kuhn pondering how scientists and sociologists make epistemological distinctions.238 He concluded that the focus of Structure was about the demarcation of the sciences from other fields of knowledge.

Agassi found it necessary to historically contextualize Kuhn’s work. Although he noted that Duhem, Popper, and others had the accepted standard theories pertaining to these issues, he acknowledged the text possessed “a kernel of[new] truth.” He concluded, “Kuhn, hardly presents any case for which his strikingly novel and interesting view proves satisfactory.”239 All philosophical reviewers were not all negative. For example, Stephen

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Toulmin was enthusiastic. However, Toulmin had been pushing philosophy of science in his text The Philosophy of science.240 EARLY ESSAYS

In 1964, Dudley Shapere of the University of Chicago dissected the first edition of Structure for the Philosophical Review.241 Shapere immediately took a philosophically defensive stance when approaching the text, but an offensive mode when dissecting its subject matter. He argued, “This important book is a sustained attack on the prevailing image of scientific change as a linear process of ever-increasing knowledge, and an attempt to make us see that the process of change in a different, and Kuhn suggests, more enlightening way.”242 This was Shapere’s subtle manner of stating that Structure is an attack on logical positivism or “’development-by-accumulation.’”243 Although Shapere would not have described himself as a logical positivist, his understanding of the enterprise of science had that underlying rationale.244

The reviewer thoroughly dealt with the significance of “scientific revolutions” and the text found it problematic. The controversial aspect of Kuhn theory was embedded in the notion that, “Scientific revolutions are here taken to be those non-cumulative development episodes in which an older paradigm is replaced in whole in part by an incompatible new one.”245 Shapere felt that this “burden[ed]” Kuhn’s paradigm theory.246 Shapere stated:

What must be asked is whether anything is gained by referring such gains, if any, are offset by confusions that ensue because of such a way of speaking. At the very outset, the explanatory value of the notion of a paradigm is suspect: for the truth of the thesis that shared paradigms are (or are behind) the common factors guiding scientific research appears to be guaranteed, not so much by a close examination of actual historical cases, however scholarly, as by the breadth of definition of the term “paradigm.”247

Shapere supported the observation of the overuse of the phrase paradigm, i.e. halfhearted scholarship, by noting the number of times that Kuhn suggests that science “ought” to expand in a particular manner. The reviewer also noted that Kuhn’s “views appear too strongly and confidently held to have been extracted from a mere investigation of how things have happened.”248

This burdened nature of Kuhn’s argument continued to draws Shapere’s review back to the paradigm concept. Shapere argued that Kuhn’s vague use of the paradigm concept undermined confidence in Kuhn’s model, because it suggested that Kuhn had not done actual research. Shapere stated:

The feasibility of a historical inquiry concerning paradigms is exactly what is brought into the question by the scope of the term ‘paradigm’ and the inaccessibility of particular paradigms to verbal formulation. For one hand, as we have seen, it is too easy to identify a paradigm; and on the other hand, it is not easy to determine, in particular cases treated by Kuhn, what the paradigm is supposed to have been in that case.249

Structure was underdeveloped in that Kuhn had not adequately developed the theoretical structure and linguistic aspect of his argument in regards to this novel concept prior to publishing the novel. As Shapere stated, “Kuhn discuss[ed] the theory because it is as near as he can get in words to the inexpressible paradigm.”250

The review concluded that the evidence provided for the existence of paradigms was inadequate. Shapere remained unconvinced of Kuhn’s usage and noted, “[The] blanket use of the term ‘paradigm’ to cover such a variety of activities and functions…obscure[d] important differences of those activities and functions.”251 This implied that several aspects and uses of a paradigm were unequal in relation to roles played in scientific progress. Kuhn’s egalitarian treatment of each component of a reigning paradigms veiled important differences in their respective levels of significance.

There were greater concerns pertaining to this new image of science that is produced through Kuhn’s “obscure and vague” historiography. Shapere also took a critical view of the idea of incommensurability: the unbridgeable conceptual gap between paradigms. According to Shapere, Kuhn’s the tendency to distort his theories and misinterpret his subject matter were as proliferate and significant enough that they became a liability to his description of science.

He felt Kuhn’s argument relied on vague arguments. For example Shapere reefed to Kuhn’s statement that “‘the normal-scientific tradition that emerges from a scientific revolution is not only incompatible but often actually incommensurable with that which has gone before.’” This idea ran counter to the view of positivist that scientific advance was cumulative, which claimed that “earlier sciences are derivable from later.” 252 Shapere was not a

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defender of this type of historiography. Instead he desired a more developed and nuanced argument that would at least lay bare the areas of scientific disciplines that are common and serve as developmental foundations.253 In Shapere’s estimation Kuhn utilized the idea of “meaning” in relation to description, function, and operation in order to strengthen the argument in regards to paradigms and incommensurability. He cited the example of the Copernican understanding of the term “planet.”254 After explicating Kuhn’s explanation of meaning, Shapere stated, “ Kuhn has offered us no clear analysis of ‘meaning’ or, more specifically, no criterion of change of meaning; consequently it is not clear why he classifies such changes as changes of meaning rather than, for example, as changes of application.” He went on to argue that Kuhn’s explanation of meaning was tied to the overemphasis of the impact of a paradigm on perception, which suggests a pattern of presumption that leads Kuhn into the error of distortion.255 The explication of Structure suggested that Kuhn’s argument pertaining to the development or growth of knowledge was problematized by his obscure description of paradigms, which served as a foundation. This required that Shapere deal with the issue of paradigm acceptance. Though providing a spirited analysis, one senses Shapere’s exercise of restraint. He asked:

For if ‘the differences between successive paradigms are both necessary and irreconcilable’ and if those differences consist in the ‘paradigms’ being ‘incommensurable’—if they disagree as to what the facts are, and even as to the real problem to be faced and the standards which is a successful theory must meet—then what are the two paradigms disagreeing about? And why does one win?256

He continued, “How can we say that ‘progress’ is made when one paradigm replaces another?”257 In other words, “the logical tendency of Kuhn’s position is clearly toward the conclusion that paradigm replacement is not cumulative but is mere change: being ‘incommensurable [it contradicts any notion of accepted notion of progress].’”258

Kuhn’s notion of incommensurability impeded the historical and philosophical expectation that science advanced in a linear and “rational” manner.259 Shapere explained that the reliance upon a psychological “conversion experience”260 the mechanism for change or ideological dominance. This ran counter to the common understanding of scientific advance, because Structure theory negated the idea that a revolution was the reasoned and progressive movement towards the truth. Kuhn confirmed this when he stated, “‘What occurred was neither a decline nor a raising of standards, but simply a change demanded by the adoption.’”261 Therefore, for Kuhn “‘neither truth or error [was] at issue, [which implied that we may have to relinquish the notion, explicit or implicit, that changes of paradigm carry scientists and those who learn from them closer and closer to the truth,’”262

According to Shapere, the removal of epistemological considerations was to be expected in the wake of works in the history of science from historians like Duhem.263 Kuhn was aware of the relativistic nature of his theories. He had conceded that though the old image of scientific progress was negated, a scientific revolution was to some degree a movement away from past error. Shapere’s response was to attribute this new “relativistic” view—that negates the sense that the science of today is truer then that of the past—on works of authors Duhem, Feyerabend, and Toumlin.264 Therefore, he suggests that philosophers of science, a field dependent on the works of historians, should approach the latest “unbalanced” historical texts with caution.265

In 1965, Gerd Buchdahl of Cambridge University reviewed Structure for History of Science. He felt that it was a “peculiar” statement on the transformation of the disciplinary view of its subject matter. As several other reviewers he noted Kuhn’s optimism towards the emerging ‘‘’historiographic revolution in the study of science.’” Structure undermined the view of the epistemological efficacy of science through equating it with “a general theory of knowledge.”266 Buchdahl felt that Kuhn’s new image of science implied that the history of ideas, philosophy and science progressed through a process of evolutionary ‘Gestalt-views.’267 As most other reviewers Buchdahl took exception to Kuhn’s notion of paradigms, which has its inhabitants “living” in different worlds. However, he resolved to interpret Kuhn’s notion of living in different worlds as needing contextualization. Buchdahl concluded:

If we accept [Kuhn’s broader terms] we shall no longer look at past scientific achievements merely from the vantage point of the present-day textbook science…on the contrary, it will be the pride-of-the-trade to explain why some particular impasse had to occur. The ‘errors’ of past scientists will become manifest as the children of the necessary logic of scientific history. 268

Buchdahl suggested that if historians incorporated Kuhn’s considerations into their work it would transform the historiography in the field. He still felt that there was a ‘vagueness” in relation to “boundary-lines” of the paradigm

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and its mechanisms of governance and change. He concluded, “It is difficult to answer these questions from Kuhn’s text, because of the inherent lack of definition or precision in the key concept of the ‘paradigm.’ The review continued in a manner that others had not. Buchdahl acknowledged that Kuhn’s argument was an affront to the prevailing positivism. He wrote, “[Structure] set out to abolish several apparent shibboleths erected by a variety of misguided philosophical schools, such as logical positivists and their successors…as well as the array of scholars the falsificationist disciples of Popper—a truly formidable array of scholars.”269 He went on to compare the failings of both philosophies and provided a final analysis:

I think that after reading this book no historian and no philosopher of science will ever be quite the same again…Kuhn is at home in a fairly wide variety of scientific contexts, and there is an air of excitement and revolutionary fervour which infects the reader. The richness and the plausibility of the argument perhaps demands a price: sometimes the conclusion looks more promising than appears on closer inspection.270

Buchdahl’s appraisal was balanced in that it he both grasps and discussed the aspects of the text that readers most appreciated. At the same time, he recognized the weakness of Kuhn theoretical construction. Nonetheless, Buchdahl concluded, “One thing for certain: that we have here a new historiographical paradigm which will surely leave its mark on future generations.”271

Stephen Toulmin wrote an essay for special book section for Encounter in 1971. He was captivated with the “new humanism” that he perceived in the sixties intellectual environment. Especially in regards to the history and philosophy of science. This movement was made manifest in the “preoccupation with the concrete and the historical, in a fresh determination to grasp the dynamics of change, in a sense of the complex interactions between different aspects of human life and culture, and a novel concern with ‘function’…in the evolutionary sense.”272 The introductory comment noted an expanding interest in the context and components of change—with an eye on function—that seem important at the end of the twentieth century.

Toulmin was aware that these concerns were not new.273 He felt in the previous work of historians and philosophers of science these interest were regulated to the periphery of in the history and philosophy of science He began the review with the clarification that current intellectual concerns had origins that were traceable to the turn of the century. Toulmin explained:

The rationality of conceptual change in the natural sciences, the historical interdependence of philosophy and science, the manner in which the social organization of the scientific professions influences the critical judgments of scientists and the practical judgments of scientists and the practical assessments of technologists: during the last ten years, such questions have graduated from being the fringe concerns of a few philosophical heretics to a position of central philosophical significance.274

Consequently, the article began with a survey that covers the expanse of thought, about science and other disciplines, over the twentieth century. He concluded that across the academy, during the regime of “‘modernism,’ [artistic and intellectual activities] were redefined in static, structural, a-historical, non-representation, and wherever possible mathematical terms.”275 This movement had its greatest impact was the philosophy of science. He argued, “[In the past], the main task for professional philosophers was to analyze the synchronic, logical relations holding between different propositions within particular static cross-sections of a science” an interest that continued until the 1950’s.276

According to the reviewer, a metamorphosis became evident during the fifties when philosophers began to chant, “’There is no logic of discovery’”277 in response to a generation of thinkers that were consumed with determining the underpinning rationale of change. When Kuhn’s Structure first appeared in 1962-it fit into this movement, and implied that, [philosophers of science] should pay more attention to the sociology of science, and consider (e.g.) how the institutionalization of scientific disciplines has influenced the forums and criteria by which the adequacy of new scientific ideas are judged.”278 The outrage over this suggestion was commensurate to that of a political scandal.

Toulmin made it clear that regardless of one’s opinion about Structure, “the diachronic issues dealt with in Kuhn’s book are not only legitimate but inescapable.”279 Furthermore, the issues that emerged as a result of the text’s popularization had moved the core concerns of philosophers to more toward the margins. According to Toulmin, Structure was the straw that had broken the proverbial camel’s back. Kuhn’s argument made it undeniable that philosophers believe that, “the rationality of natural sciences involves something more than the logical coherence of the propositions forming its current intellectual cross-section.” This understanding led Toulmin to

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conclude that philosophers must come to term with the fact that, “the historical development of the natural sciences has a genuine relevance to the philosophical understanding of scientific procedures.”280

The Journal of Philosophy of Science had Purtill, of Western Washington State College, dissect Structure in “Discussion: Kuhn On Scientific Revolutions.”281 The author’s opening statement revealed an awareness of the interdisciplinary significance of Kuhn’s latest text. He chose to immediately make it clear that Kuhn had described paradigm in a number of different ways. Then Purtill summarized the context of normal science when describing the mundane practices of scientists as “explaining by means of a paradigm unexplained phenomena similar to those already explained by the paradigm.”282

Purtill attributed growth in a discipline to the fact to the application of a paradigm by scientist to an area of the natural world that held interest for them. He argued.

Due to the innate limitations of science and scientists, no paradigm has the capacity to explain or resolve all the phenomena with which it is confronted. Consequently, after a paradigm has been in use for time, certain phenomena emerge which despite repeated attempts could not be explained within the parameters of the dominant paradigm. Its replacement or a “revolution” transpires when, “weak [ened] confidence in the paradigm and …a theory appears which explains or gives promise of explaining phenomena left unexplained by the currently accepted paradigm, it may overthrow it and become the new paradigm.283

Purtill concluded that although Kuhn is “describing matters of historical fact,” he neglected to recognize that sometimes instead of being “discarded” a fading paradigm is “absorbed into the new theory” and “retained.”284

Purtill’s discussion moved on to summarize the intellectual consequences of Kuhn’s analysis. The first was the departure from one paradigm to another and the realization that “what formerly counted as science is no longer science,” which served as a philosophical challenge to the notion of science growing in a cumulative manner. This implied that all change was relative and not logical, which meant “rational justification” can be given for “revolution.”285Purtill countered this implication by stating that though theories change, “purpose and standards” remain the same, which means “science is cumulative.”286

For Purtill, intellectual or scientific accumulation implied that the processes of growth are rational. He argued further that due to the rational nature of the enterprise of science, conceptual changes have been and were presently justifiable through rational means.287 Purtill’s argument, stated directly, is that science is stable at its core, cumulative, and rational to Kuhn’s inference that the radical transformative aspect of science means that it is irrational. Kuhn’s irrationality eliminates the opportunity for the accumulation of knowledge, which denies a rational linear shift for change and progress. Purtill concluded that Kuhn had not proved his point.288

This project has contextualized Kuhn’s Structure through examining the early criticisms in order to reveal the adverse intellectual climate into which his theories were received by historians and philosophers of science. Contextualization has been provided through reviewing the critique of Kuhn’s post-Structure work, which included Structure, in reverse chronological order. The intent of this approach is the deconstruction of the current historical Kuhn. Deconstruction of the popular notion of Kuhn was necessitated in order to provide an accurate historical representation of the theorist that would consider the spectrum of possible critiques and images of Kuhn.

For the most part, Kuhn’s ideas were found antithetical to the common sense of these scholars and contradicted notions of logical positivism that were prevalent during the period of its publication. Recreating the volatile and enduring discourse which surrounded Structure required a summary of its criticisms and meetings 289 that were held to discuss the text. Kuhn’s obituaries were also useful due to their distillation of the author in relation to his critics, friends, and peers and their perceptions on the significance of Structure at the time of his departure.

This project demonstrated that the criticisms and opinions of the text are directly correlated to the interpretations of and intellectual investments in the text or to opposing philosophies, which were often independent of Kuhn’s intention. I argue that the hostile response served as a genesis—or starting point—for the intellectual bifurcation of Structure from its author. Primarily, due to the fact that Kuhn was inspired to write the text through an personal revelation and based his main concepts on that experience. Hence, incommensurability and paradigms became central to the altercations that followed its publication. This exercise also represented a reconstruction of bifurcation of Structure from its author. This exercise of critical reconstruction revealed that although Kuhn experienced professional advancement, held honored positions in the organizations of both the history and philosophy of science, and received the highest honors in these disciplinary communities, he remained intellectually and socially on the margins of these fields unto his death. However, Structure maintained its life through consistent involvement—as a historical and philosophical topic—in intellectual discourse.

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In addition to Structure, this exercise discussed The Essential Tension,290 and post-Structure, which demonstrated the role of these works in the clarification and further articulation of Kuhn’s controversial text. We discussed reviews of his collaboration with German philosopher Paul Hoyningen-Huene, i.e. Reconstructing Scientific Revolutions: Thomas S. Kuhn’s Philosophy,291 which were written to further articulate, expand, and support the Kuhnian enterprise. This examination demonstrated that Structure subsumed the Kuhnian canon in order to enhance its own intellectual currency and perpetuate its existence. The summation of Kuhn’s response to his critics demonstrates that Structure has not one, but a plethora of philosophical existences.

The explication of the diverse meanings that Structure held for scholars across the academy required a brief discussion of the text’s multiple interpretations. The titles of current journal articles outside of the history and philosophy of science revealed that Kuhn’s text was unintentionally appropriated across disciplinary boundaries. I demonstrated that cross-disciplinary appropriation of his ideas was a function of the veneer of authority provided through his strong academic ties to James B. Conant, former President of Harvard University and Director of the Manhattan Project, and to his academic pedigree. According to critiques, Kuhn attempted to justify his critique of the traditional image of science through advertising his pedigree in the preface of Structure and created for himself a veil of credibility. In turn, it allowed scholars in the humanities to borrow his theories in their pursuit to diminish the high regard for science through arguing that a number of intellectual endeavors function in a similar “objective” or “rational” manner.

In the process of my investigation I mentioned texts that dealt with the internal aspects of science in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These are texts that Conant cited in his own works. The intent was to de-sensationalize Structure and reveal that an aspect of the significance accredited Structure—in terms of being innovative or novel—was inaccurate and that external historical considerations were imminent in the future of the history of science. However, I argue that the history of science has evolved through scholars appropriating the text to advance such work, but not to the degree that Kuhn suggested. Moreover, the disciplinary squabbling over Kuhn’s theories and the unintended cross-disciplinary appropriation of Kuhn’s ideas has caused Structure to have a life of its own. Notes: 1 Kuhn 1962. Hereafter referred to as Structure. 2See Hoyningen-Huene 1993: 3. Hoyningen-Huene provides the highest estimate of translations. It is at least two-dozen, if not twenty-five. The yearly sales provided by University of Chicago Press. 3 See Fuller 2000: 1. The other was Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization (London: Tavistock, 1967). 4 In a discussion on the cross-disciplinary preponderance of Kuhn’s theories Professor Bruce Hevly compared Structure to On the Origins of Species. According to Hevly, and at least one of his other colleagues, Darwin is cited in debates over evolution, but few Darwinians have ever read the text. 5 Hull 1996: 203. 6 Kuhn 2000: 276. 7 Edge et al. 1997: 483-502. 8 Edge et al. 1997: 485. 9 Edge et al. 1997: 490. 10 Edge et al. 1997: 492-494 11 Edge et al. 1997: 502. 12 See Pompa 1998:6006-611. Logical Positivism is associated with a group of about thirty-six philosophers known as the Vienna Circle, who had meeting in Vienna. According to Routleledge, “the work of this group constitutes one of the most important and most influential philosophical achievements of the twentieth century, [in regards to] analytic philosophy and philosophy of science (606).” The term logical positivism was derived from the conservative branch of the group and was represented in a treatise by Albert Blumber’s and Herbert Feigl’s paper ‘Logical Positivism.” The claimed, “The new logical positivism retains the fundamental principle of empiricism but feels it has attained in most essentials a unified theory of knowledge in which neither logical nor empirical factors are neglected. Form the point of view of logical positivism, the Kantian synthesis concedes too much rationalism by assuming the existence of synthetic a priori truths (608).” The statement went on to argue against a priori propositions and stated that metaphysics are “meaningless.” 13 Kuhn 1977. 14 Hoyningen-Huene 1992.

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15 See Charles C. Gillispie. The Edge of Objectivity. (Princeton: New Jersey, 1960); Israel Scheffler. Science and Subjectivity. (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1967). Ziaudinn Sardar. Thomas Kuhn and the Science Wars. (Cambridge: Icon Books, 2000). These text deals with the credibility and distinction of science in its claim of authority based on objectivity. The call for objectivity has gone beyond the sciences into other intellectual disciplines. However, Kuhn’s suggestion that scientific knowledge is subject to the same social influences that affect other forms of knowledge speaks to the credibility of those claims. 16 In later sections, we will discuss the heated response to these concepts 17 Kuhn 1970: viii. 18 Kuhn 1970: 17. Kuhn stated, “ in the early stages of development of any science different men confronting the same range of phenomena, but not usually all the same particular phenomena, describe them in different way (17).” 19 Kuhn 1970: 11. 20 Kuhn 1970:172 21 Kuhn 1970: 25 22 Kuhn 1970: 52. Normal science was discussed in relation to revolutionary or “extraordinary science.” 23 Kuhn 1970: 52-53. See Chapter VI, “Anomalies and the Emergence of Scientific discoveries.” 24 Kuhn 1970: 10. 25 Kuhn 1970: 18. 26 Kuhn 1970: 52. 27 Kuhn 1970: 109 28 Kuhn 1970:52 29 Kuhn 1970:11 30 Kuhn 1970:98 31 Ibid. 32 Kuhn 1970:63 33 Kuhn 1970: 65. 34 Kuhn 1970: 65. 35 Psillos 1994: 921 36 Fuller 2000. 37 Fuller 1992.We will discuss this article later. 38 Fuller 2000: xii 39 Ibid. 40 See Kosinki, Jerzy N. Being There. (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1971). The movie was based on this novel. 41 Fuller 1992: 243. This quote it was from the earlier article from which the book was developed. However, both pieces deal with the same subject matter. 42 Ibid. 43 Fuller, Steve to Max Hunter. Seattle, 23 July 2002. In my possession 44 See Rouse 2000:1756. Rouse reviewed Fuller’s text for science. The review hones in on Fuller’s political agenda in statements like “contemporary intellectual reflection on science [has become] ‘ritualized political impotence (1755).’” Rouse noted that the thrusts of the text are political in nature. They were Kuhn’s intellectual and political matrix, a chapter on philosophical history hat focuses in on the political implications of the science debates between Mach and Planck, and Fuller’s attacks on philosophy, science studies, and the social sciences. He concluded, “Readers interested in the philosophy and politics of science will gain much from the detailed interpretations and arguments in this provocative book, even though Fuller is led astray in his own conclusions (1756).” Also see Hanne Andersen, “Critical Notice; Kuhn, Conant, and Everything—A Full or Fuller Account,” Philosophy of Science 68 (2001):258-262. Mikeal Hard, “Thomas Kuhn: A Philosophical History of Our times” Isis 92, no. 2 (2001)436-437; David Hollinger, “Paradigms Lost,” New York Review of Books (2000 ):23 . These reviews contextualize the radical nature of Fuller’s account of Kuhn and imply his not-so-hidden agenda. 45 Cavena 2000. 46 Kuhn 1968: 74 47 Cavena 2000:88. The use of sources (or the canon of Kuhn’s work) in order to understand theories in Structure represents that for many scholars the text and Kuhn’s subsequent works represent one set of theories about the enterprise of science. Also, the methodology used is based on advice from Bertrand Russell. He stated, “In studying a philosopher, the right attitude is neither reverence nor contempt, but first a kind of hypothetical sympathy, until it is possible to know what it feels like to believe his theories.”

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48 Russell 1945: 39 49 Kuhn 2000:208. 50 Cavena 2000:93 Cavena noted that in discussing Planck, he argued ‘discoveries are extended processes, seldom attributable to a particular moment in time.’ However, he contradicted himself in another statement that “revolutionary changes are somehow holistic. They cannot be made piecemeal, one step at a time.” (94) 51 See Fuller 2000:101; Kuhn 2000:13-33, 253-324. The articles “What are Scientific Revolutions?” and “A Discussion with Thomas S. Kuhn” discuss Kuhn’s Gestalt switch. Fuller cites Kuhn’s story conveying his first gestalt switch. a story that is so well known that it is redundant. Kuhn mentions it in various places. It is the tale of his attempting to make sense of Aristotle’s irrational science, which was based on his assumption that Aristotle was intelligent and rational. Kuhn used an approach taught by his psychiatrist. Basically, he tried to understand the world through Aristotle’s eyes or mind. This made Aristotle's physics. This made Aristotle’s physics appear brilliant. Kuhn argued that this had historiographical or philosophical implications. However, I would argue that almost any historian, who was immersed in their material could have this type of experience. 52 Fuller 2000:119. 53 Andresen 1999: S43-S67. 54 Andresen 1999:S43 55 Ibid. 56 Ibid. 57 Andresen 1999:S45 58 Andresen 1999:49 59 Andresen 1999:52. 60 Weinberg 1998:48. 61 On the Science Wars See Thomas F. Giern, Cultural Boundaries of Science: Credibility on the Line, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999. Nick Jardine and Maria Frasca-Spada, ed, “Splendours and Miseries of the Science Wars,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science. 28 (1997): 219-235. Daniel L. Kleinman, “Beyond the Science Wars,” Politics and the Life Sciences, 17 (1998): 133-145. Andrew Ross, ed., Science Wars, (Duhem: Duke University Press, 1996.) 62 Weinberg 1996: 48. 63 Ibid. 64 See Lakatos and Musgrave, ed. 1970: 59. Margaret Masterman gives the frequented quoted summation of the diverse number and usages of paradigms in Structure. 65 Weinberg 1996:48. 66 Ibid. 67 Ibid. 68 Ibid. 69 Ibid. See Kuhn 1970. This idea is clearly portrayed in the final chapter of Kuhn’s second edition of Structure and its addendum, which is titled “Postscript.” 70 Weinberg 1998:52. 71 See Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979). Although this text is not solely based on Structure, Kuhn is frequently to challenge the traditional modern assumption about the foundations of knowledge. According Weinberg, Rorty thought Kuhn was the most influential philosopher to write in English since world war II. Weinberg was stating the case of those that would level the playing field through stating that science no longer held a privileged position in the academy, which was based on the a cult of objectivity. Charles C. Gillispie. The Edge of Objectivity: An Essay in the History of Scientific Ideas. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1960. 72 Weinberg 1996: 52 73 Several reviews of Structure have placed Kuhn in a camp of historical and philosophical revolutionaries, which numbered Feyerabend among them. Feyerabend is known for his unorthodox philosophy of science. He believed that there was no method and that science was anarchistic, which contextualizes the early concern that Kuhn’s theories were unorthodox. Feyerabend had also utilized the term incommensurability to describe scientific misunderstandings. David Lamb, and Gonzalo Munevar. The worst enemy of science? : Essays in memory of Paul Feyerabend, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000); Matteo Motterlini, ed., For and Against Method: Including Lakatos Lectures on Scientific Method and the Lakatos-Feyerabend Correspondence, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1999); Gonzalo Muneva, ed,. Beyond Reason: Essays On The Philosophy of Paul Feyerabend, (Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1991).

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74 See Jan Golinski, Making Natural Knowledge: Constructivism and the History of Science, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988). The Strong Program is associated with David Bloor. In particular, a group of sociologist of science, who were connected to the University of Edinburgh. 75 Weinberg 1996:48. 76 Weinberg 1996:49. 77 Weinberg 1996:48. 78 See Kuhn 1977. The Essential Tension has a few essays that deal with the linguistic transformation of Kuhn’s argument, which was used to explain incommensurability. 79 Ibid., Weinberg makes this statement based on his experience reading of Subrahmanyan Chandreska’s translation of Newton’s Principia. 80 Ibid. 81 82 Thomas S. Kuhn. Black-Body Theory and the Quantum Discontinuity 1894-1912 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997). This text dealt with Max Planck’s physics and will be discussed later. 83 Weinberg 1996: 49. 84 Several of the reviews of the work suggest that Kuhn did not take advantage of the book to demonstrate the theories he argued for in Structure. Kuhn wrote the text in a manner that it was only accessible to physicists. 85Weinberg 1996: 49. 86Weinberg 1996: 50. 87 Weinberg 1992: 52. Implicit in this statement is the knowledge that Einsteinian physics had not changed either the scientific or public perception of figures. In other words, Newtonian physics is still taught. 88 Ibid. 89 Weinberg 1996:52 90 Van Gelder 1996: 7. 91 Ibid. 92 Jones 1996: 93. 93 Ibid, 94 Ibid. 95 Ibid. 96 Fullmer 1998:372-377; Hull 1996: 203-204. 97 Hull 1996: 203-204. 98 Hull 1996: 203. 99 Ibid. 100 Ibid. 101 Hull 1996: 204. 102 Ibid. 103 Ibid. 104 Ibid. 105 Ibid. 106 Fullmer 1998:372-377. 107 Fullmer 1998: 374 108 Fullmer 1998: 377 109 Buchwald 1996: 3-4. 110 Buchwald 1996: 4. 111Heilbron 1998:505-515. 112 Heilbron 1998:505. 113 Ibid. 114 Heilbron 507 115 Ibid, 505. 116 Heilbron 1996: 515 117Gutting 1993: v 118 Gutting 1993:xi 119 The essays fall under the categories of Philosophy, Social Sciences, Humanities, and History of Science. The essays and authors are “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” by Dudley Shapere; “Kuhn’s Second Thoughts” by Alan Musgrave; “Accidental (Non-substantial) Theory Change and Theory Dislodgment” by Wolfgang Stegmuller;

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“Reason, Tradition, and Progressiveness of Science” by M.D. King; “The Paradigm Concept and Sociology: A Critical Review by Douglas L. Eckberg and Lester Hill, Jr.; “Kuhn versus Lakatos, or Paradigms versus Research Programmes in the History of Economics by Mark Blaug; “Paradigms and Political Theories” by Sheldon Wolin; T.S. Kuhn’s Theory of Science and Its Implications for History” by David Hollinger; “Paradigms in Science and Religion” by Ian Barbour; “Politics as Metaphor: Cardinal Newman and Professor Kuhn” by Richard Vernon; “Some Intertheoretic Relations Between Ptolemean and Copernican Astronomy” by Michael Heidelberger; “The Recent Revolution in Geology and Kuhn’s Theory of Scientific Change” by Rachel Laudan; and “The Kuhnian Paradigm and Darwinian Revolution in Natural History” by John C. Greene. 120 Horwich 2000: 121 Horwich 2000:2 122 Ibid. 123 The discussants were philosophers, historians, and sociologists of science. Scientist were numbered among them. 124 See Psillos 1994: 925-926. 125 Hoyningen-Huene 1993: 126 Psillos 1994: 127 Psillos 1994: 923 128 Psillos 1994:925 129 Ibid. 130 Psillos 1994: 926 131 Barker 1994: 193-195 132 Barker 1994:193 133 Barker 1994:195. 134 Jordan 1994: 135 Jordan 1994: 379. 136 Ibid. 137 Jordan 1994:380 138 Ibid. 139 Ibid. 140 Kuhn 1977: 141 Siegel 1980: 142 Siegel 1980 359 143 Ibid. 144 Ibid. 145 See Kuhn 1977:xvii 146 See Weinberg 1998: 52. There are many versions of this story, but this account seemed most fitting. 147 Kuhn 1977:xxi 148 Kuhn 1997:x-xxxiii 149 Siegel 1980: 359. 150 Siegel 1980:360 151 Ibid. 152 Siegel 1980: 361 153 Siegel 1980: 362 154 Siegel 1980: 370 155 Siegel 1980: 365 156 Siegel 1980: 366 157 Siegel 1980: 373 158 Medawar 1978. 159 Ibid. 160 Ibid. 161 Kournay 1979. 162 Kournay 1979: 279 163 Kournay 1979: 280 164Ibid. 165 Musgrave 1971: 166 Kuhn 1970.

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167 Musgrave 1971: 287 168 Musgrave 1971: 288. 169 Musgrave 1971: 287-288. 170 Musgrave 1971: 288. 171 Ibid. 172 Ibid. 173 Musgrave 1971: 289. 174Musgrave 1971: 290 175 Ibid. 176See Kuhn 1970:174 –210; Musgrave 1971: 289-290. I am discussing “Postscript” via the review. Consequently, the reader may want to read this brief section of Structure to familiarize themselves with the text. 177 Musgrave 1971: 291. 178 Kuhn 1960. See the Preface to the first edition of Structure. 179 Musgrave 1971:291. 180 Ibid. 181 Musgrave 1971: 291. 182 Musgrave 1971: 292 . 183 Ibid. 184 Ibid. 185 These types of concerns are viewed as having little influence over science, but Betty Jo Tetter-Dobbs work on Sir Isaac Newton reveals that this assumption is not necessarily true. 186 Musgrave 1971: 293 187 Ibid. 188 Ibid. 189 Musgrave 1971: 294 190 Ibid. 191 Ibid. 192 Ibid. 193 Musgrave 1971:295 194 Ibid. 195 Ibid. 196 Ibid. 197 Ibid. 198 Ibid. 199 Lakatos 1970. 200 Dolby 1971. 201 Ibid. 202 Ibid. 203 Ibid. 204 Ibid. 205 Ibid. 206 Ibid. 207 Ibid. 208 Ibid. 209 Ibid. 210 Del Carril 1973. 211 Del Carril 1973: 399. 212 Del Carril 1973: 400 213 Ibid. 214 Ibid. 215 Ibid. 216 Smart 1972. 217 Smart 1972: 266. 218 Smart 1972: 267. See Sir Karl R. Popper. The Poverty of Historicism, (Boston: Beacon Press, 1957).

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Shapere 1964: 389.

219 Shapere 1971: 707. Shapere restricted himself to Kuhn’s presentations and recommended Lakatos’ as “important and provocative.” 220 Shapere 1971:708. This is Shapere’s reference to the Darwinian evolutionary metaphor/model that Kuhn used to describe the growth of knowledge. 221 Ibid. 222 Shapere 1971: 709. As discussed earlier Kuhn had changed the nature of paradigms in “Postscripts.” This synthesis had taken place by the time of this meeting. 223 Ibid. 224 Ibid. 225 Gillispie 1962:1251 226Gillispie 1962: 1251 227 Ibid. 228 Gillispie 1962:1252 229 Gillispie 1962:1253 230 Barber 1963. 231 Barber 1963: 298. 232 Ibid. 233Hesse 1963: 286. 234 Hesse 1963: 287 235 Stopes-Roe 1964: 158 236 Stopes-Roe 1964: 159 237 Stopes-Roe 1964: 161 238 Agassi, Joseph. The Journal for the History of Philosophy 4 (1966): 351-354. 239 Agassi 1964: 354 240 See Toulmin 1953; Toulmin 1967; 15-27; Toulmin 1971; 53-57. The former is an introduction the philosophy of science, which revealed an attempt to demystify science through making it accessible to the a broader audience. The later two are articles that are more supportive of Kuhn’s efforts. The two men are often put in the same camp. 241 242 Shapere 1964: 383 243 Ibid. 244 Shapere 1964: 384 245 Ibid. 246 Shapere 1964: 384-385 247 Shapere 1964: 385. 248 Shapere 1964: 386. 249 Ibid. 250 Shapere 1964: 387. 251

Shapere 1964: 389. 252

Shapere 1964: 390. 253

Ibid. 254

Shapere 1964: 391 255

Ibid. 256

Ibid. 257

Ibid. 258

Ibid. 259

Shapere 1964: 392 260

Shapere, 391-392 261

Ibid. 262

Ibid. 263

Shapere 1964: 383, 392. 264

Shapere 1964: 393. 265

Buchdahl 1965:55 266

Ibid. 267

Buchdahl 196:56 268

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269

Buchdahl 1965: 64 Buchdahl 1965: 59

270

Buchdahl 64 271

Toulmin 1971:53 272

Ibid. 273

Toulmin 1971: 54. 274

Toulmin 1971:55 275

Toulmin 1971: 56. Toulmin was possibly referring to himself, as well. See Stephen Toulmin. On Human Understanding (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970). 276

Ibid. 277

Ibid. 278

Ibid. Pertaining to the study of changes in language over time. 279

Ibid Page 56. 280

Purtill 1967:53-58. 281

Purtill 1967: 53 282

Ibid. Page 53. 283

Ibid. Page 53. 284

Purtill 1966:52-53. 285

Purtill 1966: 54. 286

Purtill 1966: 55 287

Purtill 1966: 58. 288

We were unable to discuss two meeting that dealt with Structure in a disparate manner. The talks are in two books. See Roger H. Steer, “Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science” Historical and Philosophical Perspectives of Science. Volume V (Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press, 1970); Robert G. Colodny. Mind and Cosmos: Essay in Contemporary Science and Philosophy, (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1966).

289

Kuhn 1977. 290

Hoyningen-Huene 1992. 291

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