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Chapter 5– Scientific change and scientific revolutionsScientific ideas change fast.
Logical empiricist philosophy of science
The dominant philosophical movement in the post-war period was the logical
empiricism, examples Carl Hempel and Karl Popper.
Logical empiricism: a philosophical system that accepts only what can be sensed and
determined by senses. It rejects non-empirical statements. In addition to empirical
statements (informatie die wordt verkregen dmv zintuigen) it also accepts logical
statements as meaningful.
One of the aims of logical empiricism is to make philosophy itself more scientific in
the hope that it gets similar advances as in other scientific parts (biology, chemistry
etc.).
What impressed the logical empiricist about science was its apparent (schijnbare)
objectivity. Unlike in other fields, where much turned on the subjective opinion of
enquirers, scientific questions could be settled in a fully objective way. Experimental
testing allowed the scientists to compare their theory directly with the facts.
Therefore, science was a paradigmatically rational (handelen op basis van een rede
(met verstand)) activity.
They draw a sharp distinction between:
Context of discovery: refers to the actual historical process by which a scientist
arrives at a given theory – subjective, psychological process
Context of justification: refers to the means by which the scientist tries to justify
the theory once they already have it (testing the theory, search for relevant
evidence and comparing with rival (concurrent) theories) – objective matter of
logic
They draw a sharp distinction between:
Theories
Observational facts
Without a clear distinction between theories and observational facts the rationality
and objectivity of science would be compromised (zou in het gedrang komen), and
they were resolute (vastbesloten) in their belief that science was rational and
objective.
Kuhn’s theory of scientific revolutions
Insufficient attention to the history of science has led to logical empiricists to form an
inaccurate and naïve picture of the scientific enterprise
Normal science: the ordinary day-to-day activities that scientists engaged in when
their discipline is not undergoing revolutionary change.
Central to Kuhn’s account of normal science is the concept of paradigm.
Paradigm consist of 2 main components:
1. A set of fundamental theoretical assumptions which all members of a scientific
community accept
, 2. A set of exemplars or particular scientific problems which have been solved by
means of those theoretical assumptions and which appear in the textbooks of
the discipline in question.
Paradigm is an entire scientific outlook: a constellation of shared assumptions,
beliefs and values which unite a scientific community and allow normal science to
take place
When scientist share a paradigm they agree on certain scientific propositions, they
agree on how future research in their field should proceed, on which problems are
pertinent ones to tackle, on what the appropriate methods for solving those problems
are, and on what an acceptable solution of the problems would look like.
Normal science is just puzzle-solving. How good the paradigm is it will always
encounter some problems (mismatches between theories and experimental facts
etc.). The job of a normal scientist is to try to eliminate these problems by making a
few changes in the paradigm.
Scientific revolutions: periods of great upheaval when existing scientific ideas are
replaced with radically new ones
Period of normal sciences last many decades. During
this time scientists articulate the paradigm by filling in
detains extend it etc. Anomalies are discovered
(phenomena which simply cannot be reconciled
(verzoend) with the paradigm). When there are a few
they are ignored. When the accumulate the
confidence in the existing paradigm breaks down. Beginning of revolutionary
science. So, the essence of a scientific revolution is the shift from an old paradigm to
a new one.
There are scientific revolutions which do not fit in the Kuhnian model. For example,
the molecular revolution in biology. But most people agree that Kuhn’s description of
the history of science contains much of value.
Why did Kuhn’s ideas cause such a storm?
1. Because of his descriptive claims about the history of science
2. Because of his controversial philosophical theses
We assume that scientist trade their existing theory for a new one if they have
evidence for this. But Kuhn argued that adopting a new paradigm involved a certain
act of faith on the part of the scientists. A new paradigm may gain acceptance rapidly
because if a new paradigm has many advocates (voorstanders) it is more likely to
win widespread acceptance.
Incommensurability and the theory-ladenness of data
2 arguments of Kuhn for these claims:
1. Competing paradigms are typically incommensurable (onvergelijkbaar) with
one another.
Incommensurability is the idea that 2 paradigms may be so different that it is
impossible to compare them with each other. As a result, the proponents of
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