NATS 1700 6.0 COMPUTERS,  INFORMATION  AND  SOCIETY Lecture 4: The Method(s) of Science  IV : Kuhn's Paradigms | Previous | Next | Syllabus | Selected References | Home | | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 |   Introduction Frank Pajares maintains a very useful page devoted to Thomas Kuhn's work, with many important links. It includes a handy outline of Kuhn's most famous work, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (2nd edition, The University of Chicago Press, 1962, 1970). A collection of essays entitled Philosophy of Science & Information Technology: A Tribute to Thomas Kuhn was initiated on the evening of June 21st, 1996, just after Thomas Kuhn's death. The emphasis on information technology makes this collection particularly relevant to this course. An interesting hour-long debate on Thomas Kuhn and Scientific Revolutions can be heard in RealAudio on ScienceFriday. Read Steven Weinberg's article  The Revolution That Didn't Happen and Alex Levine's  response, both on The New York Review of Books. Some of the ideas developed in this lecture, particularly those on research programs, are due to Imre Lakatos, the author of Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programs, in I Lakatos and A Musgrave, eds, Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge (Cambridge University Press, 1974).   Topics We have now seen that neither the so-called 'scientific method' nor 'falsificationism' provide a satisfactory answer to the question of how science is made. Perhaps the most crucial difficulty is to be found in the demonstrated dependence of observations on pre-existing ideas, assumptions, theories. Some of these pre-conceptions are an expression of the cultural and social parameters which characterize a particular age and place. Some reflect the more specific area of scientific research in which certain observations are made. In either case, this dependence is hard to articulate--it is not a simple case of cause and effect. Thus we must continue to look for a more satisfactory account of science. This can only be done by examining more closely how science actually happens. If we review any period in the history of science, we can not fail to notice that science grows more easily and rapidly when hypotheses and theories "are so structured as to contain within them fairly clear clues and prescriptions as to how they should be developed and extended. They should be open-ended structures that offer a research programme." (Chalmers, op. cit., p. 81) This idea is due to Imre Lakatos, in particular in his Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge (Cambridge University Press, 1974). For Lakatos, a research program is a structure that offers a direction, an agenda for ongoing and future research in a given field. It does so in two ways, called 'negative' and 'positive heuristics.' The negative heuristics of a program consists of the tacit, implicit assumption that the basic kernel or 'hard core' of the program must not be modified or even questioned. In other words, for the practitioners in a particular area of science the hard core is protected from falsification by what Lakatos calls a 'protective belt,' You can see an example in the known attitude of physicists against the possibility of a perpetuum mobile, that many amateurs never get tired of proposing. A perpetuum mobile is any machine that produces at least as much energy as it consumes, i.e. that has an efficiency of at least 100%. Physicists do not even look at such proposals, because they violate the first and second core theorems of thermodynamics: you can not create energy, and any physical process always has an efficiency less than 100%. As Chalmers puts it: "The hard core of a programme is rendered unfalsifiable by 'the methodological decision of its protagonists'." (Chalmers, op. cit. p. 81). The positive heuristics, rather than prescribing what scientists should not do, offers an explicit set of guidelines concerning how to alter and develop the body of science outside of the protective belt. This is what constitutes the research program. These guidelines, for example, prescribe how measurements must be made, which kind of observational techniques are acceptable, which questions and areas of investigation are worthwhile, which research projects should be funded, and so on. These guidelines also provide a method by which to judge the viability of a research program. If it leads to new testable predictions, to the discovery of new phenomena, then it is a good program. To quote Chalmers yet again, "firstly, a research program should possess a degree of coherence that involves the mapping out of a definite programme for future research. Secondly, a research programme should lead to the discovery of novel phenomena at least occasionally...Roughly speaking, the relative merits of research programmes are to be judged by the extent to which they are progressing or degenerating. A degenerating programme will give way to a more progressive rival, just as Ptolemaic astronomy eventually gave way to the Copernican theory." (Chalmers, op. cit. p. 84, 86). The Copernican System It is beyond the scope of this course to develop a critique of Lakatos' position. We must say, however, that insofar as it portrays the scientific process more realistically as being also a social process involving scientists qua social beings, it has encountered greater support than previous theories. This is particularly so if we add the further (historically speaking, it should be 'earlier') development introduced by Thomas Kuhn, especially in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (2nd edition, The University of Chicago Press, 1962, 1970). Kuhn was a physicist before he turned to the history of science. He thus knew science directly, from the inside. Kuhn regards any science as going through different phases: pre-science, normal science, crisis/revolution, new normal science, new crisis, etc. What we normally call a science often starts as rather disorganized and heterogeneous activity. Consider for example the status of mechanics at the time when Galileo appeared on the stage. Various, contradictory, often untestable ideas were freely circulating. Each contributor basically was re-inventing the wheel. Galileo and many others, and eventually Newton, cleared the field, creating a normal or mature science of mechanics. Newton was able to define the core of mechanics, by spelling out his three laws of motion: A body will continue forever in its state of rest or uniform motion unless acted upon by an external force Such a force causes a body to accelerate at a rate that is proportional to the force, and inversely proportional to the mass of the body A force acting on a body causes the body to react with an equal but opposite force and specifying ways to measure the mass of a body and the forces acting on it. He also proposed specific definitions of space, time, matter and energy--the essential ingredients of any mechanics, and quantified the properties of the most important force, gravity: the gravitational force between two pointlike bodies of masses m1 and m2 is proportional to the two masses, and inversely proportional to the square of their distance. To simplify only a little, Newton's Three Laws and his underlying definitions of space, time, matter, energy, and gravity constitute what Kuhn calls a paradigm. Notice that, as witnessed later in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Newton's three laws and definitions are not in fact as unambiguous and consistent as they look. They do hide a lot of fundamental questions. In fact, it is not uncommon for the practitioners in a particular field not to be able to articulate explicitly and fully the paradigm that is at the core of their research. However, as guidelines for future research, Newton's laws were remarkably useful and productive. They made a full research program possible, unlike most of the preceding theories of motion. This apparent contradiction is acknowledged by Kuhn, who claims that it is in the nature of a paradigm to defy logically precise definition, and that a paradigm is always "sufficiently imprecise and open-ended" to leave the room needed to improve the fit between it and the world of nature. Such improvement of fit takes place by fits and starts, and is the cause of successes as well as failures. The important point, however, is that the failures are considered the...fault of the scientists, not the inadequacy of the paradigm. For example, until Einstein solved the puzzle with his theory of relativity, the failure of astronomers to explain the peculiar orbit of Mercury in terms of Newton's laws of motion was seen as astronomers' lack of success in solving certain equations, not as the breakdown of the Newtonian paradigm. Of course, with the passing of time and the improvements in technology--particularly in instrumentation--failures can accumulate to the point where serious doubts begin to be entertained about some of the features of a paradigm. Insecurity sets in, alternatives begin to be seriously considered, and the guidelines of the prevailing research program become more and more relaxed. A crisis is looming. Read again Pauli's Desperate Letter. We then witness a veritable revolution, as a new paradigm takes the place of the old one. For example, Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity replaces Newton's Mechanics. It is essential to notice that the new paradigm is not an improvement, an adaptation or variation of the one it replaces. It is not better. It simply is the only way scientists can manage, at this particular time, to account for the new data available, as well as for the old. In a real sense, the world has changed, and it requires a new, different picture. The anomalous behavior of Mercury's orbit was not known to Newton nor his successors until well into the nineteenth century. Newton's theories were perfectly suitable to a description of the heavens as he knew them. When that view changed, the theories had to change too.   Questions and Exercises Browse, for example, through Science News, and identify instances of new findings which contradict existing theories. How are they received? In which sense is contemporary science preferable to, say, ancient Greek 'science'? (Why did I quote the preceding instance of the word science?) Begin to think about the following question: is the information revolution a revolution in Kuhn's sense? What is the paradigm ushered in by this revolution, and which previous paradigm does it replace?   Picture Credit: ARROW Last Modification Date: 07 July 2008