lcorbin@tsoft.com said:
> Here is what Steven Weinberg says about Kuhn in this context:
> "In his celebrated book...Kuhn went a step further and argued that in
> scientific revolutions the standards by which scientists judge
> theories change, so that the new theories simply cannot be judged by
> the pre-Revolutionary standards.
I'll look again, but my recollection is that Kuhn's sense of "the new
theories simply cannot be judged by the pre-Revolutionary standards"
weren't so much because of changes in scientists' standards about what
makes good science, but because of contemporary scientists' choices about
which questions were interesting. I can easily imagine that those who want
to undermine the scientific process would want to emphasize the former
reading, which isn't very far from what (as I remember) Kuhn said. The
thing they don't realize is that the prevailing theories can't change until
people come to accept that the new formulation of the problem gives a
better picture of reality. If scientists didn't change their minds about
what problems matter, Newton couldn't have convinced people that falling
apples and cannonballs fall for the same reason that planet move the way
they do. That's not changing standards in the sense that the critics mean.
[The Weinberg quote continues (I've changed the inner quote marks so it's
clear that Weinberg is quoting Kuhn. If I've misinterpreted the
punctuation, please let me know.):]
> [I]n the last
> chapter Kuhn tentatively attacked the view that science makes progress
> toward objective truths: 'We may, to be more precise, 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.'
I'll have to look for the quote and figure out what the context was. I can
easily imagine a context that makes this unobjectionable. If he says or
implies that some paradigm changes are temporarily diverting, that wouldn't
be a horrible mistatement if he also meant that in the long run, we do move
closer. I take that to mean something like the current tussle between
different interpretations of quantum behavior might all be on the wrong
track in some long term sense. That doesn't imply that we don't currently
have a better model than Bohr did.
[this is Weinberg continuing after the Kuhn quote.]
> Kuhn's book lately seems to have become read (or at least
> quoted) as a manifesto for a general attack on the presumed
> objectivity of science."
[This is Lee continuing after the end of Weinberg's words.]
> I thought S.W. said more; but in any case, that explains where Mike
> was coming from, because what Kuhn is saying, even if he didn't mean
> to, is that the theories are changing just due to people and
> societies.
I object to your phrasing here. "what Kuhn is saying, even if he didn't
mean to." I would have said "The way Kuhn's words are being read". Lee, I
think you are giving in to the deconstructionists techniques. What Kuhn
said and what he meant aren't changed because opponents of science can find
evidence of their objections by torturing the text. As Weinberg's words
say "Kuhn's book lately seems to have become read [...] as a manifesto."
That's not the same as what Kuhn said.
Kuhn certainly talked about scientific progress as a social process. His
major point was to indicate (As Tulloch and Buchanan did for politics) that
the people participating in the process have their own agendas and that
science only progresses through them. We can still see (I don't remember
to what extent Kuhn talked about this) that Science generally progresses
even though it has to wait for the social processes to play out.
Chris
---
Chris Hibbert It is easy to turn an aquarium into fish soup, but
hibbert@netcom.com not so easy to turn fish soup back into an aquarium.
-- Lech Walesa on reverting to a market economy.
http://discuss.foresight.org/~hibbert/home.html
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