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koganbot[This is my previous Kuhn 6 thread RESTARTED, since that 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. This doesn't mean that there's nothing to be gained by looking at or joining the previous discussion, but I want to start the conversation anew on this thread, on a different footing: sticking to the topic, going slow.]
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'llsuggest plea, urge, demand that for a while we take baby steps and 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? But I'm limiting us even further, to only part of the question. Kuhn originally used the word "paradigm" to mean "model," but then his usage drifted to broader meanings without his initially being quite aware this was happening, and in effect he ended up using the term in two different ways (think of how "basketball" is both the name of a ball and the name of the game that uses the ball). Once he was aware of the confusion his two uses were causing, he sharply differentiated between the narrow (and he thought more potent) use of the term, which he now called "exemplar," and the broader use of the term, which he now called "disciplinary matrix." Here on this thread we'll concentrate on the narrow, on "exemplar," i.e. "model." I personally prefer the term "model." [EDIT: But see my post entitled "Oh great" in the comments in regard to where Kuhn at one point - inconsistently - differentiates between "model" and "exemplar."]
Since the term "paradigm shift" basically refers to a shift in an overall disciplinary matrix, "paradigm shift" won't be the focus of this thread. I don't say that "paradigm shift" should therefore be off-limits on this thread (unless I change my mind and make it so), since a paradigm shift very much involves, among other things, a change in the models that are used in a disciplinary matrix (so in a paradigm shift, paradigms - i.e., models - shift). But I want you to think about "paradigm" as model, first, and here's how I want you to do it:
I want you to go through Thomas S. Kuhn's "What Is A Scientific Revolution?" (here, pp 13 to 32) and look 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, or various things are assimilated or juxtaposed, or something is an example or a metaphor or a simile, or something is used in an analogy, or something illustrates a point. Look not just for where Kuhn describes scientists using models, examples, etc. but for 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 - by Kuhn's account - paradigms (i.e. models) could be. What you come up with may not altogether match the definitions that Kuhn gives in some of his other pieces, since his definitions always seem half-assed to me. What you come up with may be better.
But stick real real real close to the text. Quote it, and when a phrase or statement seems confusing, look at the sentences right before and after it, or other parts of the essay that seem to be talking about the same subject.
(One reason I decided to start us with "What Are Scientific Revolutions?" is that it doesn't use the term "paradigm," so, without taking the term as a given, we can work out what the term can mean, perhaps with deeper understanding than we'd achieve otherwise.)
And of course you should 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
So, for this thread I want to stay with a single question: what's a paradigm? But I'm limiting us even further, to only part of the question. Kuhn originally used the word "paradigm" to mean "model," but then his usage drifted to broader meanings without his initially being quite aware this was happening, and in effect he ended up using the term in two different ways (think of how "basketball" is both the name of a ball and the name of the game that uses the ball). Once he was aware of the confusion his two uses were causing, he sharply differentiated between the narrow (and he thought more potent) use of the term, which he now called "exemplar," and the broader use of the term, which he now called "disciplinary matrix." Here on this thread we'll concentrate on the narrow, on "exemplar," i.e. "model." I personally prefer the term "model." [EDIT: But see my post entitled "Oh great" in the comments in regard to where Kuhn at one point - inconsistently - differentiates between "model" and "exemplar."]
Since the term "paradigm shift" basically refers to a shift in an overall disciplinary matrix, "paradigm shift" won't be the focus of this thread. I don't say that "paradigm shift" should therefore be off-limits on this thread (unless I change my mind and make it so), since a paradigm shift very much involves, among other things, a change in the models that are used in a disciplinary matrix (so in a paradigm shift, paradigms - i.e., models - shift). But I want you to think about "paradigm" as model, first, and here's how I want you to do it:
I want you to go through Thomas S. Kuhn's "What Is A Scientific Revolution?" (here, pp 13 to 32) and look 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, or various things are assimilated or juxtaposed, or something is an example or a metaphor or a simile, or something is used in an analogy, or something illustrates a point. Look not just for where Kuhn describes scientists using models, examples, etc. but for 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 - by Kuhn's account - paradigms (i.e. models) could be. What you come up with may not altogether match the definitions that Kuhn gives in some of his other pieces, since his definitions always seem half-assed to me. What you come up with may be better.
But stick real real real close to the text. Quote it, and when a phrase or statement seems confusing, look at the sentences right before and after it, or other parts of the essay that seem to be talking about the same subject.
(One reason I decided to start us with "What Are Scientific Revolutions?" is that it doesn't use the term "paradigm," so, without taking the term as a given, we can work out what the term can mean, perhaps with deeper understanding than we'd achieve otherwise.)
And of course you should post those ideas on this thread - or on your own livejournal, or somewhere - rather than, you know, not posting them anywhere.
Taking Mark's inventory 14
Date: 2009-02-08 10:10 pm (UTC)i: "it then also broke radically with tradition. Ultimately that break spread through and caused the reconstruction..."
ii: "conceived as a collection of many tiny molecules, moving rapidly about within a container, and colliding frequently" (following sentences expand on this concept)
Well, "molecules" and "container" and "colliding" are literal, not metaphoric, even if Boltzmann was conducting a thought experiment. And "many tiny molecules moving about" is what gases are considered to be, right? - but in the late nineteenth century this was not a given, that gases were made of molecules, so we might well want to consider this a "model." (Wiki: "During the 1890s Boltzmann attempted to formulate a compromise position which would allow both atomists and anti-atomists to do physics without arguing over atoms. His solution was to use Hertz's theory that atoms were 'Bilder,' that is, models or pictures.")
My guess here is that Mark is bolding "conceived" and "container" because they or similar terms reappear when we come to Planck, and "molecule" because Planck is to try to come up with something that he can treat similarly to how Boltzmann treats the molecule.
What I noted down: "Boltzmann reached the answer by a new route, from probability theory, and that route was fundamental for Planck, since whose work it has been standard." So a route to solving a problem became someone else's route for solving another problem, and since then, that route has become standard - that is, it is a... well, what's the word I'm looking for?
iii: "he mentally subdivided that energy into little cells or elements of size e... distributing the molecules at random among these cells... the last cell (energy E)... the first cell (energy 0)..."
None of the words Mark bolded inherently have anything to do with similitude or metaphor, so again I suspect that Mark is bolding them in anticipation of Boltzmann's work becoming a something-or-other for Planck and these same words therefore reappearing in Planck's work. (I guess calling subdivisions "cells" could be metaphoric (it's coincidental that Volta called something very different a "cell" in the previous example).)
P26:
What I noted down: "That way of solving the problem was invented in 1877, and twenty-three years later, at the end of 1900, Max Planck applied it to an apparently rather different problem, black-body radiation."
i: "To analyze that situation, P imagined a container or cavity filled with radiation, that is, with light, heat, radio waves, and so on. In addition, he supposed that the cavity contained a lot of what he called 'resonators' (think of them as tiny electrical tuning forks, each sensitive to radiation at one frequency, not at others)."
Except for "tiny electrical tuning forks" there's nothing metaphoric about any of these words either, but bolding them highlights that what Planck is doing is conceiving a way to make the black-body radiation problem resemble Boltzmann's problem about the entropy of gases and the velocity distribution of their molecules, since by doing so Planck therefore believes he'll have a method for solving the black-body radiation problem.
ii: "Roughly speaking, he used probability theory to find the proportion of resonators that fell in each of the various cells"
And I kept going with the sentence: "just as Boltzmann had found the proportion of the molecules.
iii: "cell size e"
iv: "an infinity of satisfactory values"
Don't know Mark's thought in including these in particular, though he's probably highlighting the reappearance of "cell size." "Infinity of satisfactory values" points out a feature of Boltzmann's derivation that Planck discovered had to be different in his own, where there could only be one cell size.