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“POPULAR HISTORIOGRAPHIES
IN THE 19th AND 20th CENTURIES”

European Studies Centre Seminar Room
St. Antony’s College

FRIDAY 2nd FEBRUARY, 5 P.M

Beate Ceranski (Stuttgart):

“Scientists as heroes? Marie Curie, Albert Einstein,
and the popular historiography of science”

Very true, and I do want to ‘get it right’ insofar as that is possible. Even as I was writing the first paragraph, I knew that bits of it were oversimplified. Specifically:

“Then, scientists begin to notice anomalies - places where the theory cannot explain what they perceive to be going on. If such anomalies are of the right sort and sufficiently numerous, they make [sic] provoke a crisis within the paradigm.”

It’s too chronological, to begin with. Secondly, the relationship between anomalies and crises is more complex than the simple causal link posited here.

But again, I don’t think the global warming hypothesis is anything like a large scale paradigm (it might be like a small paradigm, like the invention of x-rays).
It also seems to me that the scientific consensus regarding it has already been formed.

Kuhn can only advance your thesis project inasmuch as you read him carefully, because one is prone to think he’s just saying what we already believe about science rather than something distinctly different. (It’s significant to know that there was a huge reaction against Kuhn when the book first came out, led by people like Popper writing papers like “The Dangers of Normal Science”, who wanted to keep pushing the notion of science as communal ostensive criticism which disproves and throws out theories on a regular basis with no overarching methodological themes other than the scientific method, which remains constant).

It is quite a good goal to take from thinkers a “jumping off point for thinking not identical to [their] own”. However, this is no excuse to freelance with philosophy, because if you misunderstand what you are thinking differently from, your thinking likely won’t be improved by it’s relation to the thinker. Also, since Kuhn is such a central figure, making a significant mistake regarding him would show up to many potential readers.

I will think about this more when I am less harried by immediate deadlines and have actually finished Kuhn.

What I said, and what I think Kuhn says, is that the accumulation of a sufficient number of anomalies of the correct sort is necessary for paradigmatic change. It does not take a crisis to generate new theories. It takes a crisis for people to start taking alternative theories seriously.

I am not terribly interested in Kuhn for his own sake, right now. I am interested in Kuhn insofar as he can advance the thesis project, if only by providing a jumping off point for thinking not identical to his own.

I get the strong sense from this entry that you don’t understand what “anomoly” means for Kuhn, or how scientific revolutions relate to them.

Observational anomolies, in Kuhn’s research, never provoke crises. Case in point, the wobbling of Mercury’s orbit had been known for 150 years before the theory of special relativity was tabled as a “solution”. The only thing that provokes a crisis (which is the possibility of questioning a paradigm as such) is contradictions between two accepted frameworks, such as Newton’s physics and Maxwell’s electro magnatism.

Calling the establishment of new protocals the “creation of new paradigms” involves the standard misunderstanding of the meaning of paradigm as ‘theory’. If paradigm simply meant the scientific theory under which you operate, then Kuhn woudn’t have had to invent a new word to talk about it. A paradigm is not a theory but a paradigmatic way of solving a problem. It comes from the greek “paradigmaton” which is part of the “epagoge” way of argument: by way of example. You give a paradigmatic example (a paradigmaton) which elucidates your point clearly, which you can then transfer by analogy to the current topic of arguementation. By invoking beliefs the listener already has, you are able to convince them of something without having to convince them of any new idea.

The difference between argument from Paradigmaton and argument from Theory is that the relation between the center (the paradigm) and the work is one of analogy and not correspondance. It’s not neccesary for all work in physics to use Newton’s laws (not that they don’t apply so much, as outside physics they don’t give all the required awnsers, otherwise there would be no need for any science outside physics), but rather for all work in physics under the Newtonian paradigm to take the Newtonian solution to gravity as a paradigmatic example of how to solve a problem. Thus, since it is not a theory but a paradigm, it woudn’t make sense to question the paradigm simply because some data isn’t explained by a theory. It’s perfectly acceptable to modify Newton’s theory so long as it’s done within the methods set out in newton’s theory as a solution to the problems which it is a solution to.