sketch of Hawkes on Gould

-=kc=- star.matrix at verizon.net
Sun Jun 2 13:04:45 PDT 2002


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)



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list