THOMAS KUHNS PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE

The history of science could produce a decisive transformation in the image of science by which we are now possessed (TSSR, 1).

THOMAS KUHN (1922-1996)

He is one of the most influential philosophers of science of the twentieth century. His academic life started from physics, the history of science, and to the philosophy of science His book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is one of the most cited academic books of all time. His contribution to the philosophy of science marked a break with several key positivist doctrines, & inaugurated a new style of philosophy of science that brought it closer to the history of science. In seeing philosophy as historically-conditioned, his account of the devt. of science held that science enjoys periods of stable growth punctuated by revisionary revolutions. Ex: (Philosophy) Scholasticism to Modern Philosophy He added the controversial incommensurability thesis, that theories from differing periods suffer from certain deep kinds of failure of comparability.

ROLE OF HISTORY

Traditional History presents science as: a. Developed by accumulation provided by textbooks (facts, theories and observations) b. Result of scientists contribution Kuhn emphasized on the importance of the history of science for philosophy of science. Kuhn proposed a dialectical (non-linear) form of historical reading of the history of the philosophy of science, which traversed different forms and stages of struggles.

KUHNS PERCEPTION OF SCIENCE

Science is not a stable, cumulative acquisition of knowledge. It does not move in a linear path. Sciences progress is not uniform but has alternating normal & revolutionary phases. The revolutionary phases are not merely periods of accelerated progress, but differ qualitatively from normal science. Normal science does resemble the standard cumulative picture of scientific progress (superficially, at least). Kuhn describes normal science as puzzle-solving (TSSR, 3542). Science is a series of breaks interrupted by intellectually violent revolutions. After an important revolutions, one conceptual world view is replaced by another. Ex: From Ptolemaic understanding of the world to Copernican Revolution. From Newtons Gravitational Theory to Einsteins Relativity Theory.

Philosophy of sciences traditional subject matter is scientific knowledge, and the relevant philosophical questions concern the aim, structure, sources, methods, and justification of scientific knowledge. What is Kuhns position? He ridiculed the conception of scientific knowledge as the subject matter of philosophical reflection as one derived from the presentation of science in pedagogical textbooks. For Kuhn, an image of science drawn mainly from the study of finished scientific achievements . . . is no more likely to fit the enterprise that produced them than an image of a national culture drawn from a tourist brochure or a language text (TSSR).

KUHNS PERCEPTION OF SCIENCE

His aim is for the quite different concept of science that can emerge from the historical record of the research activity itself. This aim requires different questions to be asked about science and its history, and not merely different answers to the familiar questions that arise from the textbook image of science. Science as research activity itself (Science as a process or practice). What is the difference between a scientist and a philosopher of science?

KUHNS VIEW OF A SCIENTIST

Contrary to traditional belief, Kuhn maintained that a scientists is not an objective & independent thinker. They are not conservative individuals who simply accept what they have been taught & apply their knowledge to solving the problems which their theories speak. He/she is a puzzle-solver who aims to discover what they already know in advance. The man who is striving to solve a problem defined by existing epistemology & technique is not just a naval contemplator. He/she knows what to accomplish. He/she designs instruments & directs his thought accordingly. Is this perspective a under the context of normal or revolutionary science?

Scientific knowledge, like language, is intrinsically the common property of a group or else nothing at all. To understand it, we shall need to know the special characteristics of the groups that create and use it (TSSR, 210).

THE STRUCTURE OF SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION

The central idea of this influential book is that the development of science is driven, in normal periods of science, by adherence to what Kuhn called a paradigm.

It is a universally recognized scientific achievement which provide model problems and solutions to a scientific community (by employing shared concepts, symbolic expressions, experimental & mathematical tools & procedures). The functions of a paradigm are to supply puzzles for scientists to solve and to provide the tools for their solution. A crisis in science arises when confidence is lost in the ability of the paradigm to solve particularly worrying puzzles called anomalies. Crisis is followed by a scientific revolution if the existing paradigm is superseded by a rival. Moreover, a paradigm allows scientists to work successfully without having to provide a detailed account of what they are doing or what they believe about it.

TWO SENSES OF PARADIGMS

1. Paradigm is an exemplar. 2. Paradigm is a matrix.

Exemplar - Kuhn noted that scientists can agree in their identification of a paradigm without agreeing on, or even attempting to produce, a full rationalization of it. Lack of a standard interpretation or of an agreed reduction to rules will not prevent a paradigm from guiding research (TSSR, 44). - It consists of sets of methods, principles, assumptions, concepts & evaluative standards (blue print).

Paradigms are thus first and foremost to be understood as large eyeglasses. They are accepted examples of actual scientific practice, which include law, theory, application, and instrumentation together. They provide models from which spring particular coherent traditions of scientific research. In science, the heliocentric theory is a paradigm that superseded the geocentric theory and moderates mans scientific optimism. In philosophy, Analytic and Continental philosophies are examples of paradigms.

2. Paradigm as a matrix. - It refers to clusters of methods & principles which organizes how research should be conducted & identifies what constitute a good scientific explanation. - In working with these shared models of successful work, scientists open a field of research possibilities, a disciplinary matrix. This matrix is the context within which shared concepts, symbols, apparatus, procedures, & theoretical models are used. It articulates a domain of phenomena as a field of research possibilities, which present opportunities, challenges, and dead ends. Ex: Newtons Law of Motion grounds the explanation of projectile motion

Is

a scientific theory a paradigm?

A paradigm is essential to scientific inquiry. According to Kuhn, "no natural history can be interpreted in the absence of at least some implicit body of intertwined theoretical and methodological belief that permits selection, evaluation, and criticism (TSSR).

Paradigms help scientific communities to bound their discipline in that they help the scientist to: 1. create avenues of inquiry; 2. formulate questions; 3. select methods with which to examine questions, and 4. define areas of relevance.
"In the absence of a paradigm or some candidate for paradigm, all the facts that could possibly pertain to the development of a given science are likely to seem equally relevant (TSSR).

HOW ARE PARADIGMS

CREATED, AND HOW DO

SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTIONS TAKE PLACE? 1. Inquiry begins with a random collection of "mere facts" a. During these early stages of inquiry, different researchers confronting the same phenomena describe and interpret them in different ways. b. In time, these descriptions and interpretations entirely disappear. 2. A pre-paradigmatic school appears. a. Such a school often emphasizes a special part of the collection of facts. b. Often, these schools vie for preeminence. 3. From the competition of pre-paradigmatic schools, one paradigm emergesTo be accepted as a paradigm, a theory must seem better than its competitors, but it need not, and in fact never does, explain all the facts with which it can be confronted", thus making research possible.

4. As a paradigm grows in strength and in the number of advocates, the preparadigmatic schools fade. a. "When an individual or group first produces a synthesis able to attract most of the next generation's practitioners, the older schools gradually disappear". b. Those with "older views . . . are simply read out of the profession and their work is subsequently ignored. If they do not accommodate their work to the new paradigm, they are doomed to isolation or must attach themselves to some other group", or move to a department of philosophy. 5. A paradigm transforms a group into a profession or, at least, a discipline.

A paradigm guides the whole group's research, and it is this criterion that most clearly proclaims a field a science.

INCOMMENSURABILITY
Kuhn claimed that science guided by one paradigm would be incommensurable with science developed under a different paradigm, by which is meant that there is no common measure for assessing the different scientific theories. What is the primary role of incommensurability? This thesis of incommensurability, rules out certain kinds of comparison of the two theories and consequently rejects some traditional views of scientific devt., such as the view that later science builds on the knowledge contained within earlier theories, or the view that later theories are closer approximations to the truth than earlier theories.

He initially used incommensurability predominately to challenge cumulative characterizations of scientific advance, and to challenge the idea that there are unchanging, neutral methodological standards for comparing theories throughout the devt. of the natural sciences (like in evolution). He used the term incommensurable to characterize the holistic nature of the changes that take place in a scientific revolution. Problems whose solution was vitally important to the older tradition may temporarily disappear, become obsolete or even unscientific. On the other hand, problems that had not even existed, or whose solution had been considered trivial, may gain extraordinary significance in the new tradition.

For Kuhn, the history of science reveals proponents of competing paradigms failing to make complete contact with each other's views, so that they are always talking at least slightly at cross-purposes. Ex: (1) The Newtonian paradigm is incommensurable with its Cartesian and Aristotelian predecessors in the history of physics. These competing paradigms lack a common measure because they use different concepts and methods to address different problems, limiting communication across the revolutionary divide. The process of scientific change is eliminative and permissive rather than instructive. In the process of confronting anomalies, certain alternatives are excluded, but nature does not guide us to some uniquely correct theory.

For Kuhn, The reception of a new paradigm often necessitates a redefinition of the corresponding science. Some old problems may be relegated to another science or declared entirely "unscientific." [e.g. alchemy] Others that were previously nonexistent or trivial may, with a new paradigm, become the very archetypes of significant scientific achievement. [e.g., tidology, the study of the tides] The normal-scientific tradition that emerges from a scientific revolution is not only incompatible but often actually incommensurable with that which has gone before" (TSSR, 103).

"AWARENESS IS PREREQUISITE TO ALL ACCEPTABLE CHANGES OF THEORY" (TSSR, 67).

It is a significant transformation from one framework to another. It is conditioned by the dialectic movements/struggles of different societal and epistemological factors.

How

does paradigm change come about? 1. Discoverynovelty of fact. Discovery begins with the awareness of anomaly. The recognition that nature has violated the paradigm-induced expectations that govern normal science. A phenomenon for which a paradigm has not readied the investigator. Perceiving an anomaly is essential for perceiving novelty (although the first does not always lead to the second, i.e., anomalies can be ignored, denied, or unacknowledged). The area of the anomaly is then explored. The paradigm change is complete when the paradigm/theory has been adjusted so that the anomalous become the expected. The result is that the scientist is able "to see nature in a different way. N.B.: But assimilating new information does not always lead to paradigm change. Not all theories are paradigm theories.

Why should a paradigm change be called a revolution? What are the functions of scientific revolutions in the development of science? A scientific revolution is a noncumulative developmental episode in which an older paradigm is replaced by an incompatible new one. A scientific revolution that results in paradigm change is analogous to a political revolution. It comes about when one paradigm displaces another after a period of paradigm-testing that occurs only after persistent failure to solve a noteworthy puzzle has given rise to crisis. As part of the competition between two rival paradigms for the allegiance of the scientific community.

When paradigms change, the world itself changes with them. How do the beliefs and conceptions of scientists change as the result of a paradigm shift? It is really difficult to fit nature into a paradigm.
How does science progress?

SOME EXAMPLES:
Geocentric Theory Heliocentric Theory Creationism Theory of Natural Selection Theory of Spontaneous Generation Theory of Biogenesis Contraction Theory Plate Tectonics Theory Newtonian Mechanics Einsteins Special Relativity

NORMAL VS. REVOLUTIONARY SCIENCE

The central distinction of Thomas Kuhns TSSR (1962) is that between normal science and revolutionary science. Subsequent devts. in cognitive psychology have vindicated Kuhns departures from standard theories of cognition. It may even be the case that what is worth saving in Kuhns treatment of revolutions depends on the account of cognition that he developed for normal science. After all, Kuhns own most informative characterization of revolutionary science is that it is extraordinary nonnormal. Kuhns account of normal scientific cognition as puzzlesolving practices is guided by the exemplary problem solutions that he called exemplars, together with what he termed an acquired similarity relation.

How does science work? Scientific work is highly routinary suggests that we might be able to characterize modern scientific practice in terms of a method. There is, of course, a long history of such claims, beginning with Plato and Aristotle but dating especially from the time of Francis Bacon and Rene Descartes. Today the idea that there is a single general method that defines scientific inquiry (the scientific method) remains popular among school administrators and the general public, but it has been virtually abandoned by historians, philosophers, and sociologists of science.

Kuhn stated that nearly all mature science is normal science & that normal science is, in some sense, routine. How did he explain normal science as a routine? Indeed, for him, the existence of routine problems (& problemsolving activity) is the hallmark of a mature science. This, if anything, is his criterion of demarcation of mature science from immature science and nonscience. Many issues, including our overall conception of what science is, who scientists are, and what they do, hinge on the answer to this question. At one extreme is the view that scientific work is methodical, dull routine and that scientists themselves are rather plodding people with tunnel vision. Yet Kuhn strongly denied that scientific work, in its salient aspects, proceeds on the basis of logical or methodological rules. Scientists, he said, do not employ many rules explicitly, nor will any set of rules that captures past practice be reliably projectable onto the future of science (TSSR, V).

In short, Kuhn confounded the Popperians, logical positivists, & others by claiming that scientific work is far more routinized yet far less methodical than they had imagined. How is this possible? The answer to this question is that Kuhn denied that routine scientific work is normally methodical in the sense of applying a set of rules. Rather, scientists directly model their current problem-solving efforts on concrete cases consisting of previous problem-solving achievements, which Kuhn termed exemplars.

Stated in another way, Kuhns point is that traditions and established, successful practices cannot be invented overnight by an act of will on the part of an individual or a group. Kuhn rejected the Enlightenment view that rational political societies and scientific communities can be created at will by simply destroying established traditions and replacing them by a rationally planned enterprise by means of a Popperian constitutional convention. His conception of science was preEnlightenment in several respects, including appreciation of the importance of tradition. Kuhns main efforts, in explaining the emergence & maintenance of normal science, were devoted to the human, social-constructive side of normal science. Even given the right sort of world, it takes a very special sort of community to realize normal science. Kuhns twin focus here was on the recruitment and training of new members of the community and on the maintenance of order within the community and the policing of its boundaries.

Kuhn suggested that the scientific community operates surprisingly like a medieval guild: (1) It is a community of practitioners who possess expert knowledge. (2) The community sharply distinguishes itself from the nonexpert, lay public, including other expert scientific communities. Boundaries are maintained by the high costs of admission and expulsion, enforced by professors, journal editors, peer reviewers, and other gatekeepers. (3) There is a standard training procedure for novices in a given specialty area. They are trained on the same problems, using the same or similar textbooks & laboratory exercises. At advanced stages, the training typically involves something akin to a masterapprentice relation. (4) The knowledge is imparted by example far more than by rule.

(5) Hence, the crucial knowledge that distinguishes an expert from a well-read novice remains largely tacit, inarticulate, & more knowing-how than knowing-that. It involves teaching by showing & knowing by doing. (6) Strong personal commitment to the imparted tradition is expected. Being too critical of community presuppositions and practices threatens both the community and ones own career prospects.

How does a normal science work? Kuhn popularized the view that scientific work is problem solving, not in Poppers grand sense but as a matter of routine. In order to secure their position in the community and thereby gain a professional reputation & accessto more resources, normal scientists must pose and/or solve puzzles that further articulate the paradigm without breaking with its central thrust. The problems they tackle must be challenging and the work in solving them original but not radically innovative. Normal scientists must walk a tightrope, one held taut by Kuhns essential tension between tradition & innovation

How is it that scientists can recognize their own kind, so to speak, that is, recognize a piece of work and its author(s) as belonging to their specialty area? More specifically, how is it that scientists can recognize that a problem falls within their domain of professional expertise and responsibility in the first place, & subsequently determine whether dealing with it is feasible, given current intellectual and socioeconomic resources? First, normal science screens out as irrelevant the vast majority of potential problems that might present themselves. It further screens out many of those that do fall within the general domain of the particular specialty in question, on the ground that these problems are not yet solvable because there exist no suitable exemplars to indicate what a good answer would look like.

What is the role of an exemplar in a paradigm? The exemplars in a particular puzzle are not merely abstract models but also contain the primary computational resources relevant to solving the new problems with which they are matched. One or more exemplars, suitably adapted, provide a model of one s current puzzle and the sought-for solution. One figures out how to solve the current puzzle by finding sufficiently close matches to puzzles solved previously.

REVOLUTIONARY SCIENCE
How is revolutionary scientific inquiry possible? Therefore, in seeking to understand revolutions, we are drawn back to the nature of normal science (my central topic) and how tradition-bound inquiry, almost inevitably, leads to crisis. Even subtle developments, such as one can find in the tradition-bound work of normal science, can have evolutionary implications, once those implications are explored and explicitly embodied in theoretical and experimental practice.

POPPER-KUHN DEBATE
Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn met at a conference in swinging London to compare and contrast their views on the nature of theory change in science. The debate was recorded & extended in an influential book called Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge. Although Kuhn was at pains to begin his paper (1970) by stressing similarities between his own views of scientific development and those of Sir Karl, and albeit Kuhns official line was that the differences between Popper and himself were comparatively secondary, it soon became clear that those differences were in fact sharp and apparently rather deep. Kuhn claimed, that Popper has characterized the entire scientific enterprise in terms that apply only to its occasional revolutionary parts.

And he suggested that to accept his own account of science was, in effect, to turn Sir Karls view on its head by accepting that it is precisely the abandonment of critical discourse that marks the transition to a science (ibid.). Popper responded by, amongst other things, admitting that Kuhns normal science is a real phenomenon and that he had indeed hitherto failed fully to recognize it Normal science is, said Popper, a danger to science and, indeed to our civilization! (p. 53), adding for good measure that [i]n my view, the normal scientist . . . is a person one ought to be sorry for (p. 52).

On the basis of this comparison, Popper succinctly characterized his basic position in the form of seven propositions: 1. It is easy to obtain confirmations, or verifications, for nearly every theory if we look for confirmations. 2. Confirmations should count only if they are the result of risky predictions; that is to say, if, unenlightened by the theory in question, we should have expected an event which was incompatible with the theory which would have refuted the theory. 3. Every good scientific theory is a prohibition: it forbids certain things to happen. The more it forbids, the better it is. 4. A theory which is not refutable by any conceivable event is nonscientific. Irrefutability is not a virtue of a theory (as people often think), but a vice.

5. Every genuine test of a theory is an attempt to falsify it, or to refute it. Testability is falsifiability; but there are degrees of testability: some theories are more testable, more exposed to refutation, than others; they take, as it were, greater risks. 6. Confirming evidence should not count except when it is the result of a genuine test of the theory; and this means that it can be presented as a serious but unsuccessful attempt to falsify the theory. . . . 7. Some genuinely testable theories, when found to be false, are still upheld by their admirers for example by introducing ad hoc some auxiliary assumption, or by reinterpreting the theory ad hoc in such a way that it escapes refutation. Such a procedure is always possible, but it rescues the theory from refutation only at the price of destroying, or at least lowering its scientific status. . . . (pp. 367)

Popper does not explicitly include in this list his view on the correct scientific attitude to take when a theory fails a test. However, he does explicitly say in the preamble that If observation shows that the predicted effect is definitely absent, then the theory is simply refuted. Popper did take into account the possibility of a theorys admirers continuing to uphold a theory, even when refuted, that is, found to be false, but he claimed that such a move carries the price of destroying, or at least lowering its scientific status. On the contrary, Kuhn argued that theres only 1 clear-cut sense where a scientist can be said to be testing a theorywithin the context of normal science (within a context in which the scientist simply postulates), & takes for granted, his basic theory & basic methods; what can then be tested are statements of an individuals best guesses as to how to connect his own research problem w/ corpus of accepted scientific knowledge.

Kuhn insisted that In unusual sense, however, are such tests directed to current theory. On the contrary, when engaged with a normal research problem, the scientist must premise current theory as the rules of his game. His object is to solve a puzzle, preferably one at which others have failed, and his current theory is required to define that puzzle. . . . Of course the practitioner of such an enterprise must often test the conjectural puzzle solution that his ingenuity suggests. But only his personal conjecture is tested. (45) If [this personal conjecture] fails the test, only [the cientists] own ability not the corpus of current science is impugned. In short, though tests occur frequently in normal science, these tests are of a peculiar sort, for in the final analysis it is the individual scientist rather than current theory which is tested. (5)

As Kuhn, of course, recognised, the tests that Popper had in mind were, on the contrary, ones that (allegedly) do challenge fundamental theory. Kuhn listed, on Poppers behalf, Lavoisiers experiments on calcinations, the eclipse expedition of 1919, and the recent experiments on parity conservation. Rather perplexingly, he conceded that classic tests such as these can be destructive in their outcome and concentrated initially on the criticism that such tests, contrary to Poppers claims, are extremely rare in the history of science. This led to the already quoted remark that Sir Karl has characterized the entire scientific enterprise in terms that apply only to its occasional revolutionary parts (p. 6).

The whole rhetoric of refutation and falsification suggests disproofs or at least results that will compel assent from any member of the relevant professional community (p. 13). But there are no such things. His real position, then, was that what Popper seemed to be saying about tests never really applies either in normal or in extraordinary science. The fundamental flaws in Poppers position on testing and falsification stem, for Kuhn, from his complete misreading of the role and importance of normal science. That is, of Kuhns two comparatively secondary points of disparity with Popper, the firsthis emphasis on the importance of deep commitment to traditionwas indeed the more impt. Poppers misconception of the role & importance of normal science led him both to an incorrect demarcation criterion between science & pseudoscience and to a misappraisal of the merits of holding on to a basic theory when it runs into experimental difficulties.

Poppers view was that astrology, for example, is a pseudsoscience because it is unfalsifiable. Kuhn argued that this is incorrect at least if unfalsifiability involves never making predictions that were agreed, on the basis of evidence, to fail. (Kuhn here cited Thorndike for mainly 16th century examples of failed astrological predictions.) The real reason astrology fails to be scientific, for Kuhn, is that it has not yet developed, and of course may never develop, a puzzle-solving tradition; it has not progressed to the stage of sustaining normal science. For the 16th century astronomer, the failure of an individual prediction was a fertile source of research problems. He had a whole armory of ideas for reacting to failure: there were clearcut ways in which the data might be challenged & improved) &, if that was unsuccessful, clear-cut proposals for modifying theory by manipulating epicycles, eccentrics, etc. No such puzzle-solving ideas were available to the 16th-century astrologer.

On the central issue of reacting to falsifications (anomalies for Kuhn) by continuing to defend the central theory, he argued that Poppers account is again quite wrong, since he always acknowledged that it is possible to defend a theory against a potential refutation by, for example, introducing an auxiliary or by questioning the data. But, as we just saw, he suggested that although undoubtedly possible, any such maneuver is automatically under suspicion: [Such a defensive move] is always possible, but it rescues the theory from refutation only at the price of destroying, or at least lowering its scientific status. Kuhn argued that, to the contrary, not only is it true that all theories can be modified by a variety of ad hoc adjustments without ceasing to be, in their main lines, the same theories, but it is moreover important . . . that this should be so, for it is often by challenging observations or adjusting theories that scientific knowledge grows (p. 13).

What is Kuhns reaction against Poppers falsification? Is falsification similar to anomalies? A major step in resolving Kuhns discontent is made once we accept that falsifications are of theoretical systems rather than central theories. Kuhns anomalies are at least in the simplest case, falsifications of overall theoretical systems that scientists regard (at any rate for the time being) as likely to be resolved by replacing that theoretical system with another that shares the same central theory and differs only over some auxiliary/instrumental assumption. Most Newtonians in the 19th century regarded the observations of Uranus orbit as anomalies for, rather than falsifications of, Newtons theory because they expected that the best replacement theoretical system that predicted the correct orbit for Uranus would also be built around Newtons theory and would differ from the current one only over some auxiliary.

This attitude was, of course, dramatically vindicated by Adams and Leverrier, who, holding on to Newtons theory, replaced the auxiliary assumption about the number of other gravitational masses in the solar system and hence produced an overall system that not only correctly accounted for Uranus orbit, but also predicted the existence of a new planet Neptune. This success, in turn, made it more plausible to regard the difficulties with Mercurys orbit (known about, of course, long before Einstein) as similarly anomalous (rather than falsifying). It seemed likely that, by working within the basic Newtonian approach (that is, revising some auxiliary within the theoretical framework based on Newtons theory), a successful account of Mercurys motion could eventually be found.

There are also a couple of other passing remarks in Poppers work about the importance of background knowledge and of a scientists being immersed in a problem-situation. But he seems to have done nothing towards developing this outline idea into a systematic account. On the other hand, Kuhns account of the puzzle-solving tradition that comes as the benefit of buying into a paradigm, and his insistence on the importance of exemplars, were both attempts to put some flesh on this outline idea of mature science building on itself. In sum,Kuhns, should be seen not as advocating dogmatism, but rather as advertising the fact that commitment to the sort of framework supplied by well-developed science brings enormous epistemic benefits. Without such commitments, mature science would be incapable of making the progress it has in fact made. Poppers claim that normal science is a danger to real science & indeed to our civilization betrayed complete misunderstanding.

1. Popper sees philosophy of science as historically-conditioned. His account of the development of science holds that science enjoys periods of stable growth punctuated by revisionary revolutions called incommensurability. 2. Kuhn proposed a dialectical form of historical reading of the history of the philosophy of science. This is in reaction against traditional textbook science which is merely a narrative of facts, theories and observations of scientists. 3. Science is for Feyerabend a non-cumulative acquisition of knowledge. Sciences progress is not uniform but has alternating normal & revolutionary phases. 4. Scientists are not conservative individuals. They strive to solve a problem defined by existing knowledge & technique called paradigm which is within the context of revolutionary science. 5. A crisis in science arises when confidence is lost in the ability of the paradigm to solve particularly worrying puzzles called anomalies. Crisis is followed by a scientific revolution if the existing paradigm is superseded by a rival.

6. In paradigm constructions, a pre-paradigmatic school appears first before a random collection of facts. As a paradigm grows in strength and in the number of advocates, the pre-paradigmatic schools fade. 7. The process of scientific change is eliminative and non-permissive. In the process of confronting anomalies, certain alternatives are excluded, but nature does guide us to some uniquely correct theory. 8. A scientific revolution that results in paradigm change is analogous to a political revolution. It comes about when one paradigm displaces another after a period of paradigm-testing that occurs only after persistent failure to solve a noteworthy puzzle has given rise to normal science. 9. Kuhn stated that all mature science is normal science & that normal science is, in some sense, routine. He confounded the Popperians, logical positivists, & others by claiming that scientific work is far more routinized yet far less methodical than they had imagined. 10. Kuhns main efforts, in explaining the emergence & maintenance of normal science, were devoted to the human, social-constructive side of normal science. Even given the right sort of world, it takes a very special sort of community to realize normal science.

11. The scientific community operates surprisingly like an ancient organization: It is a community of practitioners who possess expert knowledge. Moreover, the community sharply distinguishes itself from the non-expert, lay public, including other expert scientific communities. 12. In a scientific community, there is a standard training procedure for novices in a given specialty area. They are trained on the different problems, using the same or similar textbooks & laboratory exercises. 13. Normal science screens out as irrelevant the vast majority of potential problems that might present themselves. It further screens out many of those that do fall within the general domain of the particular specialty in question, on the ground that these problems are already solvable because there exist no suitable exemplars to indicate what a good answer would look like. 14. The exemplars in a particular puzzle are not merely abstract models but also contain the primary computational resources relevant to solving the new problems with which they are matched. One or more exemplars, suitably adapted, provide a model of ones current puzzle and the sought-for solution.

15. Popper did not take into account the possibility of a theorys admirers continuing to uphold a theory, even when refuted, albeit such a move carries the price of destroying, or at least lowering its scientific status. On the contrary, Kuhn argued that theres only 1 clear-cut sense where a scientist can be said to be testing a theorywithin the context of revolutionary science. II. Answer this question in not more than 5 sentences. When paradigms change, the world itself changes with them: how do the beliefs and conceptions of scientists change as the result of a paradigm shift? (10 pts.)