 Okay, hi welcome back to history and philosophy of science and medicine. I'm Matt Brown and Today we're gonna be talking about Thomas Kuhn on paradigms and revolutions Now Thomas Kuhn is an interesting figure Through his book the structure of scientific revolutions. He's probably the most Influential 20th century philosophy of science Had influence well beyond just the reaches of philosophy And and sort of the history and philosophy of science, which is a field in some ways that he founded Kuhn Himself is an interesting figure in that he was trained as a physicist But never never really taught or worked as a physicist he worked as a historian of science For many years, but then his his main work Or at least a major part of his work the work that he's well known for Is considered philosophy of science, even though he was never trained as a philosopher His ideas are interesting original powerful And also have been disputed by by many many thinkers and what Kuhn does that was somewhat original unique for the time is he insists that we think about the nature of science in a naturalistic way that we base our thinking about science in history In in the historical evidence and also In our knowledge of psychology and and other fields like that now Kuhn begins his famous book the structure of scientific revolutions with this thought History if viewed as a repository for more than anecdote or chronology could produce a decisive Transformation in the image of science by which we are now possessed So let's talk for a moment about images of science There is what we might call the old image of science and this image might Be something you see in philosophers of science. It might be something that you see also Among scientists and the general public how they think about how science works and according to the old image Science is a rule governed activity Science seeks the truth. That's the main aim of science And scientific progress is understood as as cumulative linear and rational right through the scientific method Scientists progressively add more and more to our store of knowledge. That's sort of the the image of science that Kuhn thinks is not Defensible in the context of of history Looking at the history of science Kuhn articulates then a new image. So what's the new image of science that that? Kuhn thinks we're going to Be transformed by right well on the one hand According to this image science is a practice that is learned by example on the other You know on the other hand science seeks successful problem solving Or puzzle solving rather than truth per se And then scientific progress is is non-linear. It's not a Progress a process of steady accumulation, but it's an alternation between relatively steady And stable periods of the growth of knowledge and revolutionary periods So Kuhn gives us a dynamic picture of science how science works That looks a little bit something like this science begins in a kind of pre-paradigmatic period right or or Proto science or pre-normal science he might call it in which The the scientists the science itself is not really Come up with a stable framework scientists Are constantly debating the fundamentals of the field And each scientist has to kind of invent everything In the field from the ground up, right? The main mode of communication and pre-paradigm science are sort of long treatises book-length treatises And very little reliance on the work of previous scientists Eventually if their work is successful pre-paradigmatic scientists will Come to consensus around a paradigm a Particular result or set of scientific results a way of doing things that is exemplary that is provides a model For future research, right? so, you know Newton's Principia Aristotle's physics Ptolemy's Almagest Darwin's origin of species all provide paradigms of scientific achievement and explanation of theoretical and empirical success That lead to a practice of normal science which primarily is attempting to work on the plan of the paradigm to extend The type of solutions the paradigm provides to new areas to articulate it further in more detail with more precision And and for some period of time this goes well knowledge accumulates and grows based on the Plan that the paradigm presents But in the course of normal science Anomalies start to accumulate Intractable problems phenomena that don't easily Submit to the methods that the paradigm prescribes events that the theory cannot explain and if these anomalies accumulate to a great enough degree and the Practitioners in the community see the anomalies as significant To the work of the paradigm a sense of crisis arises, right a kind of if you will lack of faith in the paradigm To to continue to guide Research and if the if the crisis is not immediately or very quickly resolved then This will lead to a scientific revolution, right and what happens in this in a scientific revolution is that you return to Something not unlike the pre-paradigm state. It's not exactly the same as the pre-paradigm state but what you do have is you have debate about fundamental issues and You have many now competing paradigms arising as Alternative candidates for how to continue to work How to continue to do science in this field in in order to address the anomalies? and As the revolution proceeds One one paradigm will typically Get more adherence. It will become sort of better articulated than the others. It will have more success and it will grow and Eventually replace the old paradigm and kick off a new period of normal science and so it's a fully kind of cyclical cyclical account of the dynamics of science and Coon purports to trace this dynamic throughout the history now according to this This account the new sort of image of science and the sort of historical Philosophical account of the dynamics of scientific change There's a number of interesting questions that we can ask right We can ask if if this is how it works, right then how should scientists be trained? And one of the really interesting things I think about the first essay that you read the function of dogma in scientific research He really attempts to explain the form of traditional science pedagogy science education Based on what is necessary for scientific training in a in a normal science situation We can also ask I think Whether paradigms can be compared If a paradigm is if if if the revolutionary movement from one paradigm to another is not a matter of steady accumulation of knowledge But instead is a rather a rather significant shift in the nature of the practice then we can ask You know can that can that? Can the two paradigms pre and post revolution be compared to see which is better in some sense And Kuhn has some surprisingly negative things to say about this question. I think And we can also ask are the revolutions rational do they make progress is the Replacement of one paradigm by another a form of progress or not And We can ask to science get closer to the truth over time These are some of the questions that this kind of Radically revolutionary picture of science Can can raise for us. So those are some of the things I'd like you to think about going into our discussions today If you have thoughts about that Please make a note on the discord Bring it up in class or make a comment here on the video Also, you can respond to some of the discussion but board posts that have been Posted some really interesting stuff there as well. So I look forward to discussing this material with you and Otherwise, I'll see you next week