Contrasting views of science: Popper vs. Kuhn

Sir Karl Popper Sir Karl Popper was a member of the Vienna Circle in the earlier part of the 20th century. For Sir Karl, science should be interpreted logically and not psychologically. Science was “subjectless” – in other words, independent of the psychological dispositions of scientists or particular social contexts. The validity of a proposition is not sociologically determined. “The logic of science does not rest on taste.” Does a theory explain what we can observe accurately and reliably? Scientific explanation has a logical character.

According to his “falsification hypothesis” (Is the claim stated in such a way as to inform us of the procedures that would unequivocally establish the claim as false if it is, indeed, false?) The concept of “procedures” means the logical, syntactical procedures implied in stating the claim and in tying it to the observational domain to which it refers. The goal of a scientific theory is to explain what we observe with accuracy and reliability. It must be testable. The theory will help us know more about the world and predict how it will behave.

Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) Paradigm  Normal Science  Anomaly  Revolution Paradigm: A universally recognizable scientific achievement that, for a time, provides model problems and solutions to a community of practitioners. It is more global than a theory and includes: laws, theories, application and instrumentation. During different periods of science, certain perspectives held sway over the thinking of researchers. A particular work may “define the legitimate problems and methods of a research field for succeeding generations of practitioners.”

For example: Aristotle’s Physica, Newton’s Principles and Opticks, Franklin’s Electricity, Lavoiseur’s Chemistry, and Lyells’ Geology. 1.Their intellectual achievement was sufficiently unprecedented to attract an enduring group of adherents away from competing modes of scientific activity. 2. Their achievements were sufficiently open-ended to leave all sorts of problems for the redefined group of practitioners to resolve. The commitment is therefore “conceptual, theoretical, instrumental and methodological.” A paradigm is “the source of the methods, problem-field and standards of solution accepted by any mature scientific community at any given time permitting selection, evaluation, and criticism.”

Normal science: Working within and in the light of the paradigm, making it more and more explicit and precise, actualizing its initial promise by extending the knowledge of those facts that the paradigm displays as particularly revealing, by increasing the extent of the match between those facts and the paradigm’s predictions, and by further articulation of the paradigm itself. This leads to research firmly based upon one or more past scientific achievements as revealed in text books, articles, and so forth. Anomaly: In the course of such articulation, however, “anomalies” arise which, after repeated efforts to resolve them have failed, gives birth to the kind of situation in which a scientific revolution can take place. Revolution: Scientific revolutions are “non-cumulative developmental episodes in which an older paradigm is replaced in whole or part by a new one.” This is a new coherent and unified viewpoint, a disciplinary Zeitgeist. It is a radical change in theory that comes from different assumptions and an alternate viewpoint.

There is a social process underlying this development which reflects the interaction of competing research groups and communities. Innovative scholars generally come from the periphery of scholarly communities because their ideas threaten accepted assumptions and theories (e.g., Einstein). Problem: How do people who hold to different paradigms communicate? Kuhn differs from the positivist Vienna Circle who separate “fact” (observation or operation) from “interpretation” thus preserving the “objectivity” of science. Kuhn emphasizes the dependence on what counts as a “fact,” “problem,” or “solution to a problem” on presuppositions – in other words, on a sociological aspect.

Kuhn attacks “development-by-accumulation” views of science which hold that science progresses linearly by accumulation of theory-independent facts. Older theories give way successively to wider, more inclusive ones. He believes that we progress intellectually through stages of development. This can be related to Piaget’s Stage Theory account of cognitive development in children. The main concept of Equilibration which reflects the interaction of Assimilation and Accommodation processes. Assimilation – decode an event in terms of existing cognitive schemas. Accommodation – adjust to the unique features of an event by adopting different concepts and interpretive processes.

Science can be understood to move from paradigm to paradigm in the same stochastic manner that children move between stages of cognitive development: Sensory-motor, Preoperational, Concrete Operational, and Formal Operational.