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SPECIAL ISSUE: THOMAS KUHN’S PHILOSOPHICAL INHERITANCE
100 years since the birth of Thomas Kuhn and 60 years since the publication of The Structure of Scientific Revolution
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Articles
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KUHN AND THE MYSTERY OF CONSTITUTING THOUGHT, WORD AND DEED INTO A WORLD
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Ever since my first book, Social Epistemology, I have argued that Thomas Kuhn’s philosophy of science presupposes a version of many worlds realism’. This paper continues that line of argument by situating Kuhn’s thinking about language and science in the
context of shifting philosophical developments in the 1950s-1970s. Kuhn’s view is related to others exposed to the same developments, especially Willard Quine, Donald Davidson, Wolfgang Stegmüller and Karl Popper. Notably, Quine and Davidson were not tempted to go down the ‘many worlds’ route, largely due to a background commitment to a behaviorist understanding of language that precluded any role for ‘world-making’. However, Alfred Tarski’s ‘semantic’ theory of truth made a notable impression on the logical positivists and Popper, inclining the latter towards his own version of many worlds realism. As Kuhn astutely observed in his later writings, whether one adopted a monist or pluralist approach to the world depended on whether translation or meaning was the key to making sense of language. The paper ends by suggesting that the German historiographical concept of Sonderweg (‘special way’) might provide an interesting, more normatively charged understanding of the sort of many worlds realism promoted by Kuhn. -
KUHN’S PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY OF SCIENCE AND THE DEFENSE OF SCIENTIFIC RATIONALITY
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In the present paper, I provide a reconstruction of Kuhn’s philosophy of history of science based mainly on Kuhn’s criticism of Lakatos. My goal is to examine the compatibility of the Kuhnian philosophy of history with his explicit aspiration to defend scientific rationality. I argue that the Kuhnian philosophy of history is essentially formed by three tenets: (a) contextualism, (b) radical anti-presentism, and (c) naturalism. I conclude that the combination of those three tenets is incompatible with the logical distinguishability between being-justified and being-taken-to-be-justified, which is a prerequisite for the proper defense of scientific rationality.
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A STRUCTURE FOR HISTORY: REFLECTIONS FROM KUHN’S HISTORIOGRAPHIC STUDIES
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In the present work, we aim to analyze Lorraine Daston’s critiques of the historiographical value of Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions: we will defend its relevance from the attacks of “the history of contingencies”. Daston’s proposal asserts that the Kuhnian historiographical programme of professionalizing the history of science (moving it towards history departments to the detriment of science departments) has been fulfilled but has resulted in the abandonment of the Hegelian spirit from Kuhn’s historiography, i.e. the search for “a structure” of the history of science has been abandoned. We will analyze and incorporate
the recent responses from K. Brad Wray and Pablo Melogno. Finally, through a thorough analysis of the relationships between philosophy and the history of science, particularly in Kuhn’s work, we will propose a defense of the systematic and explicit use of metatheoretical structures for historiographical endeavors. -
BEFORE STRUCTURE. THE RISE OF KUHN’S CONCEPTUAL SCHEME IN THE COPERNICAN REVOLUTION
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Thomas S. Kuhn’s intellectual development could be summed up in a two-stage course, first, the transition from physics to the history of science (primarily physics) and then from the history of science to the philosophy of science, a field in which he achieved
consecration with The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (SSR) published in 1962. In the 1950s, before SSR, Kuhn dealt with the history of science and, finally, developed a detailed research on the case of the Copernican Revolution, publishing a book with the same name. The Copernican Revolution. Planetary Astronomy in the Development of Western Thought (CR). My aim in this paper is to argue that in this case study Kuhn identified all those situations that he will later describe in the terms of the SSR’s vocabulary, from “paradigm” and “incommensurability”, to “normal science” and “scientific revolution.” I think that although the terminological options in CR differ, such as, for example, the use of the expression “conceptual scheme” for what will later be called “paradigm”, a simple conceptual archaeology directs us to claim that CR is the immediate predecessor of SSR. -
PARADIGM AND SYMBOLIC UNIVERSE: THE ENDURING SIGNIFICANCE OF THOMAS KUHN
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The importance of Kuhn’s theory is examined from the perspective of its epistemological impact and contrasted with Popper’s concept of falsification; the theory of paradigm shift is analyzed as a general model of change. Its concepts are applied to Berger and Luckmann’s socially constructed reality and to the Symbolic Universe which sustains it. The theory of paradigm shift is used to analyze the process of changing the Symbolic Universe.
Critical Notes
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THE UNCOMFORTABLE KUHN. A REVOLUTIONARY READING OF DISBELONGING: TO WHAT DOMAIN SHOULD WE LEAVE THE KUHNIAN INHERITANCE? K. BRADY WRAY, 2021, Kuhn’s Intellectual Path. Charting “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions”, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, ISBN-10: 1316512177, ISBN-13: 978-1316512173
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About Kuhn we have already read, in 60 years since the release of the Structure of Scientific Revolutions, critiques portraying him as a transgressor, a visionary, a reformist of the history and philosophy of science. But to achieve all this capital of notoriety and to raise a tradition by itself – for which many turned the partisanship for his convictions into a title of nobility, becoming “Kuhnians” – having a touch of genius is not enough: one’s education is as important as one’s innate talent. Understanding Kuhn’s Intellectual Path is not only a curiosity, but also an exotic epistemic travel to different philosophical openings of his education, which influenced – contingently or decisively – his unique theory on the change of paradigms in the history of science. K. Brad Wray offers us intriguing insights on Kuhn’s intellectual becoming in one of his recent volumes published by Cambridge University Press (2021).
