> But in 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."
> 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."
Note Weinberg's correct observation that this is a tentative observation,
reinforced by Kuhn's "we may". It's anything but a strident or definite
conclusion -- it's part of a section mulling over various ways to look at
the implications of the contrasts Kuhn noted between science's
self-description and its actual history. Is anyone suggesting that we should
never even consider the idea that scientific paradigm shifts form a
successive approximation to truth?
-- Tim Maroney tim@maroney.org
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