sketch of Hawkes on Gould

[Chuck Grimes]

``...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.