by Thomas S. Kuhn
Third Edition
Copyright 1962, 1970, 1996.
This is a book that I’ve wanted to read ever since college. I was reading it when I started medical school, but studies soon overtook me. It’s a history of science. Rather, it’s a philosophical theory on how science progresses through history. From Newton and chemistry to Darwin and quantum mechanics, it tells the story of how science moves forward.
This progress is, as Kuhn tells it, not entirely linear. Often scientists will disagree about “paradigm shifts” among scientific theories. Often, the older generation does not embrace a new paradigm (or exemplar) entirely. Only a new generation will bring a new theory into dominance while the holdouts disappear to the wayside. Sometimes, famous scientists are the holdouts (as was seen, say, with the discovery of oxygen).
Scientific paradigms are groups of practices, people, and ways of thinking about the world. Paradigms are not right and wrong (true to Kuhn’s linguistic form, in which field he taught at MIT). Paradigms are instead expressive.
Paradigms are established often by young people new to the field who reorganize it in light of other learning. These revolutions only rarely succeed, but when they do, textbooks are changed. Thus, the next generation embraces the new paradigm. Unlike other fields of knowledge, textbooks take central place in this story.
From there, normal science (non-paradigm-shifting science) rules. In normal science, people work on solving “puzzles” within existing paradigms. When a new paradigm comes about, these puzzles shift to address new issues. Originally, a “crisis” occurs in the scientific community as to whether to embrace the new ways of thinking. When the positives of the new situation outweigh the old paradigm, a shift occurs, and work continues in the new paradigm.
As such Aristotle need not be viewed as ignorant or unhelpful vis-a-vis Isaac Newton – or Newton, vis-a-vis Albert Einstein. They are just different paradigms that express their findings differently. Many might complain that this takes truth out of science in favor of a sophisticated relativity, and it does. Nonetheless, it redeems the past and the history of science. By studying history (one of my favorite past times), we grow in our creative knowledge. I like this, and I like the way Kuhn thinks.
Kuhn reminds me of how Christians think about conversion. There is a “crisis” (cf. Karl Barth) and a conversion to a new paradigm. This has occurred over and over again in theological history. Why not see this essentially human practice in science, too?