Kuhn 16: Like A Metaphor
May. 21st, 2009 11:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
koganbotMark informs me that a well-regarded philosopher once said something somewhere linking "paradigm" to "metaphor." I haven't read this thing that the well-regarded philosopher said, but I felt like posting a caution anyway.
Similarity is an important theme for Kuhn: when a scientific discipline or subdiscipline undergoes a paradigm shift (in the broad sense of "paradigm" meaning "disciplinary matrix" [remember, "paradigm" has both a broad and a narrow meaning for Kuhn, the two meanings not being identical]), some crucial things that were once seen as similar or the same under the old paradigm are no longer grouped together under the new, and some crucial things that were once considered unrelated are now considered similar or the same. This similarity can be metaphoric - e.g., an electric current running through a circuit is seen to be like the flow of water in a pipe while not literally being the flow of water in a pipe. But often a similarity will be literal: after the Copernican revolution, the earth was considered similar to Mars and Jupiter etc. in that they were all material bodies that orbited the sun, i.e., planets. But this resemblance wasn't metaphoric. They were all literally planets, though the concept "planet" had to undergo a change to accommodate them all. Where the similarity isn't so direct, it nonetheless usually isn't metaphoric. E.g., for an Aristotelian, a man being restored from sickness to health is like an acorn growing into an oak, which is like fire seeking its place at the periphery and a heavy object such as a stone falling towards its place in the center. The resemblance here is not metaphoric. For an Aristotelian these are all examples of motion - literally are all examples of motion, are all variants on the same phenomenon.
"Paradigm" in the narrow sense - as a specific puzzle solution or achievement that functions as a model or example for the solution of similar puzzles - involves doing something similar to or analogous to what someone else had done in a similar situation. The problem with calling this phenomenon "metaphor" is that again, the relation is tighter than metaphor, since it's treating several things as similar enough to undergo a substantially similar operation; for example, Galileo's idea of the pendulum was adapted to a range of other problems (see Kuhn 9: Examples Versus Definitions and Kuhn 10: Vis Viva), but all of the related solutions were seen as embodying the same principle ("vis viva"). And where there isn't necessarily a single principle at work, nonetheless the resemblance isn't just a figure of speech. Resonators in a cavity filled with radiation were seen as being similar enough to gas molecules in a container as to be understood using the same probability theory. (Of course, there turned out to be a crucial dissimilarity, and this provoked a scientific revolution.)
Kuhn took his concept of similarity straight from Wittgenstein's writings on "family resemblance," which I quoted at length in Kuhn 13: A Wittgenstein Saves Nine. I'd think that Kuhn and Wittgenstein would say (well he and Wittgenstein never said it like this, but I think they would) that when we're speaking literally we're also using analogy. Which is to say, when something is a game or a duck or motion it is like something else that is a game or a duck or motion, whereas in calling something metaphoric you're saying that something is like a game or a duck or motion without being a game or a duck or motion (e.g., calling someone a "sitting duck" or a "lame duck").
I suppose that all this means that there's no hard barrier between the literal and metaphoric: but nonetheless you don't want to say that the literal is metaphoric any more than you want to say that cold is hot or quiet is loud and so on. There's no set barrier between cold and hot or quiet and loud any more than there is between "literal" and "metaphoric," but nonetheless we use those distinctions - they just happen to be relative terms by my first example of "relative" way back when.
Similarity is an important theme for Kuhn: when a scientific discipline or subdiscipline undergoes a paradigm shift (in the broad sense of "paradigm" meaning "disciplinary matrix" [remember, "paradigm" has both a broad and a narrow meaning for Kuhn, the two meanings not being identical]), some crucial things that were once seen as similar or the same under the old paradigm are no longer grouped together under the new, and some crucial things that were once considered unrelated are now considered similar or the same. This similarity can be metaphoric - e.g., an electric current running through a circuit is seen to be like the flow of water in a pipe while not literally being the flow of water in a pipe. But often a similarity will be literal: after the Copernican revolution, the earth was considered similar to Mars and Jupiter etc. in that they were all material bodies that orbited the sun, i.e., planets. But this resemblance wasn't metaphoric. They were all literally planets, though the concept "planet" had to undergo a change to accommodate them all. Where the similarity isn't so direct, it nonetheless usually isn't metaphoric. E.g., for an Aristotelian, a man being restored from sickness to health is like an acorn growing into an oak, which is like fire seeking its place at the periphery and a heavy object such as a stone falling towards its place in the center. The resemblance here is not metaphoric. For an Aristotelian these are all examples of motion - literally are all examples of motion, are all variants on the same phenomenon.
"Paradigm" in the narrow sense - as a specific puzzle solution or achievement that functions as a model or example for the solution of similar puzzles - involves doing something similar to or analogous to what someone else had done in a similar situation. The problem with calling this phenomenon "metaphor" is that again, the relation is tighter than metaphor, since it's treating several things as similar enough to undergo a substantially similar operation; for example, Galileo's idea of the pendulum was adapted to a range of other problems (see Kuhn 9: Examples Versus Definitions and Kuhn 10: Vis Viva), but all of the related solutions were seen as embodying the same principle ("vis viva"). And where there isn't necessarily a single principle at work, nonetheless the resemblance isn't just a figure of speech. Resonators in a cavity filled with radiation were seen as being similar enough to gas molecules in a container as to be understood using the same probability theory. (Of course, there turned out to be a crucial dissimilarity, and this provoked a scientific revolution.)
Kuhn took his concept of similarity straight from Wittgenstein's writings on "family resemblance," which I quoted at length in Kuhn 13: A Wittgenstein Saves Nine. I'd think that Kuhn and Wittgenstein would say (well he and Wittgenstein never said it like this, but I think they would) that when we're speaking literally we're also using analogy. Which is to say, when something is a game or a duck or motion it is like something else that is a game or a duck or motion, whereas in calling something metaphoric you're saying that something is like a game or a duck or motion without being a game or a duck or motion (e.g., calling someone a "sitting duck" or a "lame duck").
I suppose that all this means that there's no hard barrier between the literal and metaphoric: but nonetheless you don't want to say that the literal is metaphoric any more than you want to say that cold is hot or quiet is loud and so on. There's no set barrier between cold and hot or quiet and loud any more than there is between "literal" and "metaphoric," but nonetheless we use those distinctions - they just happen to be relative terms by my first example of "relative" way back when.
