Kuhn 6: Dick And Jane Examine Paradigms
Jan. 31st, 2009 01:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
koganbot[EDIT Feb. 1 12:19 PM Mountain Standard Time: I've posted a new Kuhn 6 thread that is essentially this one RESTARTED, since this one quickly evolved into an off-topic mess, and on the off chance that some of the lurkers decide to start posting, I want them to have a clearer conversation to join. You can still post here in response to specific things said on this thread, but I want the new one to be where you examine the specific passages in "What Are Scientific Revolutions?" where something's being modeled on something else or something resembles something else, etc.]
I thought that, in my discussion with Mark the other day of my six questions, we were trying to dance in the air before we'd learned how to walk. So I'll suggest that for a while we bring ourselves down to the level of "see Spot run" and "1 + 1 = 2." ("See Spot run" was a line in a Scott Foresman primary reader I was taught to read from at age 6. Spot was a puppy dog.)
So for this thread I want to stay with a single question: what's a paradigm? And I'll limit us to only part of the question. Kuhn originally used the word to mean "model," but then his usage drifted to broader meanings without his initially being quite aware this was happening. Here for now we'll concentrate on the narrow, on "model."
I suggest that you go through the article "What Is A Scientific Revolution?" (here, pp 13 to 32) and look for wherever something is said to be or seems to be a model for something else, or someone's action is modeled on someone else's, or something is said to be like something else or to resemble something else to be similar to something else, or various things are assimilated or juxtaposed, or something is an example or a metaphor or is used in an analogy, or something illustrates a point. Look not just for where Kuhn describes scientists using models, examples, etc. but where Kuhn himself uses models, examples, etc. when he's addressing us.
Here are several instances:
"But it is precisely seeing motion as change-of-quality that permits its assimilation to all other sorts of change." (p. 18)
"Roughly speaking, he used probability theory to find the proportion of resonators that fell in each of the various cells, just as Boltzmann had found the proportions of molecules." (p. 26)
"In particular, the [energy element] has gone from a mental division of the total energy to a separable physical energy atom, of which each resonator may have 0, 1, 2, 3, or some other number. Figure 6 tries to capture that change in a way that suggests its resemblance to the inside-out battery of my last example." (pp 27-28)
Also, if you look at the very top of p. 30 you will find the word "paradigmatic."
Once having done this, use what you've read in those pages to come up with your ideas of the various things (note plural) that a paradigm could be. What you come up with may not altogether match the definitions that Kuhn gives in some of his other pieces. What you come up with may be better.
And of course you can post those ideas on this thread - or on your own livejournal, or somewhere - rather than, you know, not posting them anywhere.
I thought that, in my discussion with Mark the other day of my six questions, we were trying to dance in the air before we'd learned how to walk. So I'll suggest that for a while we bring ourselves down to the level of "see Spot run" and "1 + 1 = 2." ("See Spot run" was a line in a Scott Foresman primary reader I was taught to read from at age 6. Spot was a puppy dog.)
So for this thread I want to stay with a single question: what's a paradigm? And I'll limit us to only part of the question. Kuhn originally used the word to mean "model," but then his usage drifted to broader meanings without his initially being quite aware this was happening. Here for now we'll concentrate on the narrow, on "model."
I suggest that you go through the article "What Is A Scientific Revolution?" (here, pp 13 to 32) and look for wherever something is said to be or seems to be a model for something else, or someone's action is modeled on someone else's, or something is said to be like something else or to resemble something else to be similar to something else, or various things are assimilated or juxtaposed, or something is an example or a metaphor or is used in an analogy, or something illustrates a point. Look not just for where Kuhn describes scientists using models, examples, etc. but where Kuhn himself uses models, examples, etc. when he's addressing us.
Here are several instances:
"But it is precisely seeing motion as change-of-quality that permits its assimilation to all other sorts of change." (p. 18)
"Roughly speaking, he used probability theory to find the proportion of resonators that fell in each of the various cells, just as Boltzmann had found the proportions of molecules." (p. 26)
"In particular, the [energy element] has gone from a mental division of the total energy to a separable physical energy atom, of which each resonator may have 0, 1, 2, 3, or some other number. Figure 6 tries to capture that change in a way that suggests its resemblance to the inside-out battery of my last example." (pp 27-28)
Also, if you look at the very top of p. 30 you will find the word "paradigmatic."
Once having done this, use what you've read in those pages to come up with your ideas of the various things (note plural) that a paradigm could be. What you come up with may not altogether match the definitions that Kuhn gives in some of his other pieces. What you come up with may be better.
And of course you can post those ideas on this thread - or on your own livejournal, or somewhere - rather than, you know, not posting them anywhere.
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no subject
Date: 2009-01-31 06:00 pm (UTC)I think that a paradigm is the working together of two elements.
Until I started thinking about expressing these clearly -- ie here, and to you -- I thought of them in a quasi-mathematical way. Now that I'm trying to define it more clearly, I have a very obviously Wittgensteinian version of the two elements.
Answer one: a paradigm consists of (A) a set of articulated ingredients within (B) an overall limiting geometry.
More on (A): bears something like the relationship a diagram or a map bears to what it represents (except for the articulation); ordinarily I'd reach for the word "model" for such a thing, but if I do that without caveats here I probably stomp all over your suggestions how to explore how TK uses the word "model" (because I suspect I mean something slightly different by model than you do). All the same, in terms of its relationship to nature, "model" (with its sense of possibly many bits not all present all the time, some of them moveable) feels to me more what I'm getting at than diagram. (Animated diagram?)
More on (B): Overall limiting geometry... well, the problem with this is it's maths-talk. It means the shape of setting in which things can happen, and the rules that such a setting imposes -- rules how how far things can move from each other; what the rules are of route-making...
Anyway the issue of rules and rule-making leads to answer two, copped from Wittgenstein
Answer two: a paradigm is like a boardgame, and thus consists of (C) the board and pieces, and (D) the rules, of how the pieces interact with one another (D1), and how they are allowed to move on the board (D2).
These two answers don't quite map onto each other. (A) is equivalent to (C + D1); (B) to (D2).(Hence D1 is what might be called the "rules of articulation" in A...)
Answer Two allows for a clearer analogy for paradigm-shifts (and for cumulative non-revolutionary additions) than does Answer One.
Analogy for paradigm-shifts courtesy Answer Two: A paradigm-shift occurs when pieces or board or rules are so changed that the game becomes another game: for example, chess is still chess if the pieces are white&black or red&white --- but it's not chess if a rook's rules of movement switch with a bishop's. A cumulative non-revolutionary addition is the equivalent of some determination of the exact facts about colours of squares or pieces on some given chess board...
So the upshot of this -- basically a thought-dump of where I got to prior to your request to stick with idea of 'model', but I hope it gives some sense of where "model" fits into my idea of paradigm.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-01 08:29 am (UTC)No! I very much do not want you to start with what you think a paradigm is. If I were actually your teacher I'd hand this back with an X through it and say, "Do over. Do the assignment, please." Maybe at some point in the future - most likely not on this thread - I'd want you to come up with what you think a paradigm is, if you think Kuhn's idea needs changing, but right now I want you to forget what you think a paradigm is, just as if we were studying Aristotelian physics I'd want you to set aside Einstein and Newton. I want you to (1) look at the text for wherever something seems to be a model for something else, or someone's action is modeled on someone else's, or something is said to be like something else or to resemble something else or to be similar to something else etc. etc. and work from there to come up with a notion of "paradigm" (in the narrow sense of "model") that is consistent with what is in Kuhn's text and (2) keep the conversation on the basic level of "see Spot run" and "1 + 1 = 2" and work forward in baby steps. I say this because, first, I don't think you do yet understand Kuhn's concept of paradigm, and also, your and my discussions of "theory" or "philosophy," be they on Derrida or on Bloom, while always instructive, always end in failure, so I think we need to do something different.
That doesn't mean that what you just wrote has no value. It means you need to put it in the drawer for the time being.
To steer you in the right direction, I'll pose the following question: are there any board games modeled on checkers? If so, are there rules for how you model a new board game on checkers? Is "rules" even the right term here? You might also want to check the text of "What Are Scientific Revolutions?" for what Kuhn says, if anything, about rules.
But don't do any of that before doing an inventory in "What Are Scientific Revolutions?" for where Kuhn himself shows* something being modeled on something else, something resembling something else, etc.
*I use the word "shows" because I don't recall him actually using the term "model" in the piece, though perhaps he did. Be assured he uses it elsewhere, however.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-01 11:28 am (UTC)heehee anyway, this response is actually quite vividly like responses i got from teachers in school: "very creative i'm sure but NOTHING LIKE THE HOMEWORK I SET 2/20" -- i would show this to my mum and she would be delighted and encourage me, we must have been an insufferable family to be educators for...
will try and do the inventory on the train home as doesn't need a computer or internet, just a print-out and four dfft colours of highlighter
no subject
Date: 2009-02-01 04:26 pm (UTC)