Kuhn 14: A Game Of Find The Squirrel
Mar. 11th, 2009 05:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
koganbotKuhn sees a difference between following rules and being guided by paradigms ("paradigm" in the sense of a concrete puzzle solution used as a model or example). But "rule" is not a self-explanatory term. My questions for you have been: (a) What are these rules or types of rules that Kuhn thinks other people think are in effect but he thinks are not? What would such rules do that paradigms don't do? (b) What are paradigms - these devices that Kuhn thinks function better than rules? What do paradigms do that rules don't do? (Here I'm using "paradigm" in the sense of concrete puzzle solution used as a model or example.) (c) So, what's the difference between following a rule on the one hand and modeling your solution on a paradigm on the other? (d) Why is it that Kuhn thinks that scientists proceed by way of paradigms rather than rules (or, more accurately, since scientists do sometimes employ "rules," why does Kuhn think that, for scientists, paradigms are "prior to, more binding, and more complete" than the rules we might "abstract" from the paradigms)? (e) Why does Kuhn think it's so important to distinguish between following a rule and being guided by a paradigm?
Another way to formulate the question would be: Kuhn would say that the difference between seeing a resemblance and following a rule is _______.
I've given you Kuhn's definition of "paradigm": a concrete puzzle solution used as a model or example. But given that he's been telling us that there are situations where rules are inadequate, one might well feel that there are situations where definitions are just as inadequate, and that we're in one of those situations now. In fact, in answering my questions above, you may well need to resort to examples rather than relying on definitions.
(Are definitions analogous in some way to rules - e.g., in that definitions are no more definitive than rules are?)
Here's a brief excerpt from "Second Thoughts On Paradigms" that might help, since in it not only does Kuhn use "rules" and "criteria" interchangeably (not that "criterion" is any more self-explanatory than "rule" is), in doing so he also focuses the concept a little by asking "similar with respect to what?" and saying that if we could answer that question we'd have criteria, but that we can't, and don't.
It is a truism that anything is similar to, and also different from, anything else. It depends, we usually say, on the criteria. To the man who speaks of similarity or of analogy, we therefore at once pose the question: similar with respect to what? In this case, however, that is just the question that must not be asked, for an answer would at once provide us with correspondence rules. Acquiring exemplars would teach the student nothing that such rules, in the form of criteria of resemblance, could not equally well have supplied. Doing problems would then be mere practice in the application of rules, and there would be no need for talk of similarity.
Doing problems, however, I have already argued, is not like that. Much more nearly it resembles the child's puzzle in which one is asked to find animal shapes or faces hidden in the drawing of shrubbery or clouds. The child seeks forms that are like those of the animals and faces he knows. Once they are found, they do not again retreat into the background, for the child's way of seeing the picture has been changed. In the same way, the science student, confronted with a problem, seeks to see it as like one or more of the exemplary problems he has encountered before. Where rules exist to guide him, he, of course, deploys them. But his basic criterion is a perception of similarity that is both logically and psychologically prior to any of the numerous criteria by which that same identification of similarity might have been made. After the similarity has been seen, one may ask for criteria, and it is then often worth doing so. But one need not. The mental or visual set acquired while learning to see two problems as similar can be applied directly. Under appropriate circumstances, I now want to argue, there is a means of processing data into similarity sets which does not depend on a prior answer to the question, similar with respect to what?
Another way to formulate the question would be: Kuhn would say that the difference between seeing a resemblance and following a rule is _______.
I've given you Kuhn's definition of "paradigm": a concrete puzzle solution used as a model or example. But given that he's been telling us that there are situations where rules are inadequate, one might well feel that there are situations where definitions are just as inadequate, and that we're in one of those situations now. In fact, in answering my questions above, you may well need to resort to examples rather than relying on definitions.
(Are definitions analogous in some way to rules - e.g., in that definitions are no more definitive than rules are?)
Here's a brief excerpt from "Second Thoughts On Paradigms" that might help, since in it not only does Kuhn use "rules" and "criteria" interchangeably (not that "criterion" is any more self-explanatory than "rule" is), in doing so he also focuses the concept a little by asking "similar with respect to what?" and saying that if we could answer that question we'd have criteria, but that we can't, and don't.
It is a truism that anything is similar to, and also different from, anything else. It depends, we usually say, on the criteria. To the man who speaks of similarity or of analogy, we therefore at once pose the question: similar with respect to what? In this case, however, that is just the question that must not be asked, for an answer would at once provide us with correspondence rules. Acquiring exemplars would teach the student nothing that such rules, in the form of criteria of resemblance, could not equally well have supplied. Doing problems would then be mere practice in the application of rules, and there would be no need for talk of similarity.
Doing problems, however, I have already argued, is not like that. Much more nearly it resembles the child's puzzle in which one is asked to find animal shapes or faces hidden in the drawing of shrubbery or clouds. The child seeks forms that are like those of the animals and faces he knows. Once they are found, they do not again retreat into the background, for the child's way of seeing the picture has been changed. In the same way, the science student, confronted with a problem, seeks to see it as like one or more of the exemplary problems he has encountered before. Where rules exist to guide him, he, of course, deploys them. But his basic criterion is a perception of similarity that is both logically and psychologically prior to any of the numerous criteria by which that same identification of similarity might have been made. After the similarity has been seen, one may ask for criteria, and it is then often worth doing so. But one need not. The mental or visual set acquired while learning to see two problems as similar can be applied directly. Under appropriate circumstances, I now want to argue, there is a means of processing data into similarity sets which does not depend on a prior answer to the question, similar with respect to what?
