``...It is safest, unless one is both a professional scientist _and_ a professional historian/philosopher of science, simply not to use the concept. It seems utterly silly to me, anyhow, to call Einstein's 'overturning' of Newtonian gravity a paradigm shift -- that overturning occurred well within the house of physics....''
Carrol Cox
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I'd have to re-read the pieces of Kuhn in order to clear this up, and I sold the book years ago. But I think Einstein's special relativity was precisely the kind of work that Kuhn had in mind as effecting a paradigm shift. But as I remember Kuhn didn't use special relativity as an example in the particular things I read---and that surprised me. This is very dim now, so I could be way off.
I seem to remember that Kuhn used the example of 18th C science's difficulty over understanding how a electric cell battery worked. Somebody (Galvani, Volta?) had invented a very primitive version, but couldn't develop it because of the way they conceptualized what was going on. Hence it required a paradigm shift into order to make the leap and pursue that development. I think Kuhn was attempting to explain how change in scientific thinking worked, so then those changes occurred within the general framework of science, not particularly outside science. So then overturning say the assumption of a fixed inertial frame (Newtonian mechanics) which is physics, takes place within physics and therefore effected a paradigm shift in physics. Or something like that. Besides Einstein wasn't shy about it---he wrote several books trying to advertise his theories as great changes of thinking.
Anyway Hawkes isn't a dummy, even if he isn't an historian and a scientist. I also don't subscribe to the idea that only experts get to write on science (remember the exchanges I had with Justin about this a few weeks ago?). See I don't mind being seen as a fool. The fool killers are everywhere and they'll pop up and slap me around and I'll get over it----maybe learn something.
In the meantime, we should get Hawkes over here to stand up for himself. He is very good at it, when he bothers.
Chuck Grimes
ps. Thanks for posting the review. The Nation can afford it.