sketch of Hawkes on Gould

[-=kc=-]

At 09:33 AM 6/2/02 -0500, Carrol Cox wrote:
>I would say that the shift from alchemy to chemistry was a paradigm
>shift, but the metaphor of "paradigm shift" begins to lose its bite even
>in explaining the overthrow of phlogiston theory. I used to know more
>about that than I do now.

Then you are objecting to Kuhn's own claims:

"This need to change the meaning of established and familiar concepts is 
central to the revolutionary impact of Einstein's theory. Though subtler 
than the changes from geocentricism to heliocentrism, from phlogiston to 
oxygen, or from corpuscles to waves, the resulting conceptual 
transformation is no less decisively destructive of a previously 
established paradigm. We may even come to see it as a prototype for 
revolutionary reorientations in the sciences." (p 102)

While replying to Carrol here, I'm also curious as to what Chuck thinks 
about my claim below re: Kuhn's passage as to what Hawkes is getting at. 
Hawkes is off to the exotic locale of S. Carolina; doesn't have time to 
reply, so I haven't asked him. At any rate, I hope chuck can get a copy of 
TSoSR because I'd like to hear what you think about Kuhn, Hawkes, etc.

The passage, below, is what I believe motivates Hawkes:

"by shifting emphasis from the cognitive to the normative functions of
paradigms, the preceding examples enlarge our understanding of the ways
in which paradigms give form to the scientific life. Previously, we had
principally examined the paradigm's role as a vehicle for scientific theory.
In that role it functions by telling the scientist about the entities that
nature does and does not contain and about the ways in which those entities
behave. That information provides a map whose details are elucidated by
mature scientific research. And since nature is too complex and varied to
be explored at random, that map is as essential as observation and experiment
to science's continuing development. though the theories they embody, paradigms
prove to be constitutive of the research activity. They are also, however,
constitutive of science in other respects, and that is now the point. In
particular, our most recent examples show that paradigms provide scientists
not only with a map but also with some of the directions essential for map-
making. In learning a new paradigm the scientist acquires theory, methods,
and standards together, usually in an inextricable mixture. Therefore, when
paradigms change, there are usually significant shifts in the criteria
determining the legitimacy both of problems and of proposed solutions.

That observation returns us to the point from which this section began, for
it provides our first explicit indication of why the choice between competing
paradigms regularly raises question that cannot be resolved by the criteria
of normal science. to the text...that two scientific schools disagree about
what is a problem and what a solution, they will inevitably talk through each
other when debating the relative merits of their respective paradigms. In the
partially circular arguments that regularly result, each paradigm will be shown
to satisfy more or less the criteria that it dictates for itself and to fall
short of a few of those dictated by its opponent.... {P}aradigm debates always
involve the question: Which problems is it more significant to have solved?
Like the issue of competing standards, that question of values can be answered
only in terms of criteria that lie outside of normal science altogether, and
it is that recourse to external criteria that most obviously makes paradigm
debates revolutionary. Something even more fundamental than standards and
values is, however, also at stake. I have so far argued only that paradigms
are constitutive of science. Now I wish to display a sense in which they are
constitutive of nature as well."

(p. 109-110)