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.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-01 06:16 am (UTC)OK, to start with, I was recommending up above that on this thread we stick REAL CLOSE to Kuhn's actual text in order to see what's going on here. Maybe I didn't make that recommendation altogether explicit, but I will now: Stick real close to Kuhn's text! I was also recommending that we take this conversation down to the level of "see Scott run" and "1 + 1 = 2," which doesn't necessarily mean that we restrict ourselves to a vocabulary that a six-year-old or even a twelve-year-old already knows, but that we work really hard to ensure that we're communicating with one another and that we're not referring to ideas that seem to come from outside of the text or outside of our discussion and that need further elaboration. And I will say as a fifty-five-year-old I don't know what the phrases "empirically without much doubt" and "empirically proven" mean.
So, how should we try to answer your question: "How important is Kuhn's concept of 'natural phenomena'?" Well, first, I'd ask does Kuhn have a concept of "natural phenomena," and if so, what is it? So far it's only a two-word phrase, and we don't even know if he just tossed it in there with little thought or if it belongs to a strenuously thought-out theory. You say that the phrase "natural phenomena" suggests "a fundamental order to the way things work," so my question here is does anything else in the text support this interpretation? Does Kuhn ever mention anything like there being a fundamental order to the way things work? I'll give a quick answer to that one: No. As far as I can recall, nowhere in the piece does he give an opinion one way or another as to whether there's a fundamental order to the way things work. He may well believe there is such an order, but I wouldn't assume that the two-word phrase "natural phenomena" commits him to a belief that doesn't seem to have much to do with what the piece is about anyway. "Phenomena" means "stuff," not "order."
To explore further, look at the context. Kuhn is saying that revolutionary changes in a science can be distinguished from normal, cumulative changes in that the revolutionary changes "involve discoveries that cannot be accommodated within the concepts in use before they were made. In order to make or assimilate such a discovery one must alter the way one thinks about and describes some range of natural phenomena. The discovery (in cases like these 'invention' may be a better word) of Newton's second law of motion is of this sort. The concepts of force and mass deployed in that law differed from those in use before the law was introduced, and the law itself was essential to their definition." And from there he goes on to describe the changes wrought by the Copernican revolution: Before it occurred, "the sun and moon were planets, the earth was not. After it, the earth was a planet, like Mars and Jupiter; the sun was a star, and the moon was a new sort of body, a satellite." Etc.
And then I'd go to the rest of the essay. "What had been paradigmatic examples of motion for Aristotle - acorn to oak or sickness to health - were not motions at all for Newton. In the transition, a natural family ceased to be natural; its members were redistributed among preexisting sets; and only one of them continued to bear the old name."
Now, the way I read all this is pretty much opposite how you read it. One set of concepts (Aristotelian motion) gives you one world, while another set of concepts (Newton's laws of motion) gives you another world.