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Thomas Kuhn

Thomas Kuhn changed the view of scientific progress totally. Where once the history of science was seen as a steady progression where theory is added to theory until the truth is found, Kuhn saw a series of revolutionary changes of the world-view of science, where the view of one period had very little in common with the previous. Most importantly, he questioned the possibility for science ever to find a truth.

All research presupposes a world-view, a collection of fundamental objects, natural laws and above all definitions of what research is. Where the natural sciences differ from less developed sciences such as economy or psychology is precisely the presence of strict such rules. These often appear obvious to us.

Thomas Kuhn who, after having studied physics in the 1940s, started to lecture in history of science, was the first to point this out. Earlier in his career he had never read older scientific documents in original and was surprised at how different their concepts were. He found Aristotle's theories not only to be a less developed version of Newtonian physics. Instead it was an entire different way to look at it, one starting from other fundamentals than Newton's mass, speed and gravitation.

He became fascinated by the history of science and realized that the conventional way to view scientific progress was flawed. He did not see research as a flow of new discoveries that where added to the old ones to form a greater whole. Instead he saw it as a series of world-views that replaced each other under tumultuous forms. This was what drove research forward.

He called these world-views "paradigms". Immature sciences are characterized by not having established any paradigms yet. Therefore every researcher has to invent the building stones of his research on his own. Research becomes a random collection of observations that cannot be structured into a whole, since there is no framework to put them in.

Before the science of electricity was developed, for example, every researcher saw different observations as fundamental and tried to build his theories from them. This led to there being several competing paradigms, each with its advantages and disadvantages.

As the field matures, a paradigm establishes itself as the dominant one. Research progresses quickly since the paradigm gives certain fundamental concepts and laws to build on. In addition, it becomes clear which areas of research are fruitful to work on: those that cannot really be explained yet, but on the other hand are not totally incomprehensible in the current view.

Ptolemeian astronomy that placed earth in the center with other heavenly bodies in more or less complex orbits around it, is an example of a long-lived paradigm. When it was established it was possible to concentrate on getting the calculations to correspond better with the observed orbits of the heavenly bodies. This work within the paradigm was successful and it seemed like they were getting closer and closer to a total correspondence with reality.

Originally, the heliocentric astronomy of Copernicus could not give better orbital predictions than Ptolemeios. What was needed to make it a success was a crises within the earlier world-view. Ptolemeian astronomy step by step became more complicated by the addition of laws for the movements of heavenly bodies. After a while it became obvious that they were not on the right track and the search for alternatives was on.

According to Kuhn, this is a typical development. Paradigm shifts seldom occur as soon as a new paradigm is invented, but only when the old one is shown to be inadequate. Then a total reevaluation of research is needed. Concepts are turned upside down, earlier research must be reinterpreted and nothing is what it seemed to be, despite it still being the same phenomenon that is described.

This is when what we normally call research is made. Research that actually yields new results. When the paradigm has been established it is a matter of routine, what Kuhn condescendingly calls "puzzle solving". The greatest part of research falls into this category and is not a creative occupation, but exactly puzzles that can be solved by putting the right pieces in the right order. Only details in the set of natural laws are filled in to give a better description of reality, just as was done during Ptolemeian astronomy.

Kuhn writes: "Mopping up is what most scientists are occupied with during their career." "From a close view... this occupations seems like an attempt to force nature into the preformed and relatively inflexible box the paradigm provides."

The idea of the development of science as even and cumulative only fits to this period. Real progress, the paradigm shifts, are totally revolutionary and result in tearing up all previous results and putting them back together in a new theoretical framework.

It is seldom possible to point out a single person as the originator of paradigm shifts, as is often done. Kuhn uses the discovery of oxygen, which led to a revolution in chemistry, as an example. Scheele, who first produced pure oxygen, didn't see it for what it was. Is it then possible to state that he discovered it? Only in the modern paradigm is it possible to say that it was oxygen he discovered. According to earlier theories it was "dephlogisticated air" he produced, something fundamentally different from out conception of oxygen.

But the discovery of a new paradigm is not only an improvement. Some problems have to be abandoned in the new paradigm, and some phenomena could be better explained within the old one. One example is the theories of Newton that led to having to accept gravitation as an inexplicable inherent property of matter under a long period, while it earlier had been tried to find mechanical explanations and "inherent properties" where seen as superstitions.

This realization leads to Kuhn questioning our whole concept of progress. It is not possible to compare paradigms, according to him. They are so different that argumentation between them is rendered impossible. For example, different phenomena are seen as important to explain, making it impossible to objectively say which one is better. He even goes so far as to say that the adherents of different paradigms live in different worlds.

But this view also makes it necessary to question the whole existence of an objective truth, which Kuhn does. He does not believe that science ever will be able to describe truth and compares his theories to Darwin's: the resistance to them stem from them describing a development moving away from something, but without a definite goal, an almost random drifting.

Not seeing paradigms as necessary truths leads to having to question why only the prevailing is taught as an absolute truth. He writes that scientific education "is a small and rigid education, probably more so than any other expect possible for orthodox theology".

The examples studied are chosen to be easy to solve under the paradigm taught and thereby perpetuate it. Examples that are difficult or impossible with conventional methodology are not shown. "Science students accept theories on the basis of the authority of the teacher and text books, not on because of evidence. Applications in books are not there as proof, but because solving them is part of acquiring the paradigm at the basis of current praxis."

A large part of the reason for which we see historical development as a linear process towards current theories, is our perspective. The text books only show the discoveries that have led to them and nothing of the side tracks or of earlier, alternative paradigms. Kuhn sharply criticizes this lack of historic context: "Science education uses nothing similar to art museums or classics libraries. The result is a drastic distortion of the scientists view of the history of his field."

What has been seen as science also varies. For a long time the purpose of art was seen as depicting reality as faithfully as possible. So there was a concept of progress in art that can be compared to modern science's. Modern art destroyed this idea and demanded that every movement be looked at for its own merits. Kuhn sees scientific paradigms as fundamentally incomparable and with different advantages and disadvantages.

Kuhn's book "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" has succeeded in establishing a paradigm itself, namely the paradigmatic view of the history of science. It has been sold in over a million copies and translated into sixteen languages.

In important part of its success is that the conclusions of Kuhn not only are about scientific progress. His ideas are valid for less developed sciences as well, such as sociology and economy as well as for art movements. It is also possible to call the development of ecological thinking a paradigm.

Long before postmodernism became fashionable, Kuhn questioned absolute values and deconstructed the causes of scientific progress. The result is a drastic change in out view of science and scientific progress.

Andreas Ehrencrona

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