The extended version of the Popper-Kuhn presentation from the 2014 PORESO conference in Leeds. Hopefully a valuable introduction for postgraduate students.
Comparing how many citations of both theorists is like judging Popper in terms of Khun. Because it uses the acceptance of a theory as a mark of how it is successful. An idea that is created by Khun.
I'm a first semester Philosophy bachelor student and they've already made me write ten pages about Popper and Kuhn, so I thank you for this short introduction to the subject!
The two views may or may not be mutually exclusive. Perhaps one could with more incisive demarcations make them more distinct. The perspectives are nonetheless revealing in that they are coming from two distinct disciplines: philosophy and history. However I see a unacknowledged third one that has unfortunately never been systematically researched. It is the sociological perspective and quite evident in the everyday practice of science. It would include following distinctive characteristics not addressed in these two view points. 1. The pursuit of scientific inquiry as a profession. 2. The tribal characteristics inherent in schools of thought and the evidence of constant bickerings amongst them. It is perhaps less pronounced in natural sciences but it is an inherent part of all disciplines. 3. The social prestige associated with the pursuit of science stemming from the need for an evolutionary biological determined reproductive fitness within a tribal society; rather than any true motivation to unravel the mysteries of the world. No wonder we have so many primate genera and hominid species. Being the discoverer of a species; being a fertile source of citations and gaining a foothold in history is probably more important than finding our true origins. The ceremony of Nobel Prizes; the long introductions to the achievements and list of honors accorded to public speakers lecturing on some latest discoveries in Physics are the legacy of our tribal past. 4. The references to established authorities and there are quite a few. A new kind of thinking can be even implicitly considered as a heresy. Think of Susskind's reference to Hawking? All these characteristics are evident in sciences. Even the airy castle of Mathematics is not totally free from them. Without much doubt these characteristics belong to the domain of sociology. Add to it the involvement of money, increasingly more important for scientific pursuit including mathematics; that may need super or quantum computers in future; and we soon land up in the domain of political-economy. Karl-Marx; propounding for himself explicitly an absolutely tribal universalism with a partly pseudo-scientific ideology was however one of the first to acknowledge the material basis of many of the airy ideologies; which many thinkers prone to unrestricted flights in ideological abstractions do find disconcerting and are therefore quite unwilling to dissociate from Marxism for obvious reasons. True, through his rather abstract, for some people perhaps bordering on an ideological, interpretation of the scientific endeavor Karl Popper has given a guiding principle; upon which mankind could and perhaps should orient itself; but it is absolutely imperative to know all the factors that are impediment to raise it to a general principle. And these impediments are probably mostly the result of our ignorance or unwillingness to confront these socio-biological and political-economical aspects of the human scientific endeavor. Only by acknowledging their extant ramifications within these disciplines can we truly transcend them.
You do have to pick a side because Popper's teleological approach was built from the nails he finished in Hume's coffin for induction. Popper turned to a teleological approach to science not because it was tidy or good but because science had nowhere else to go after the destruction of historicism. Kuhn's approach was a historicist approach which was fiercely criticised by Popper for being weak precisely becuase it is inductive.
@GM 99 Popper's approach was to define science by its purpose, like engineers tend to do with things, which he loosely described as "to learn from our mistakes" - he focused on explaining the tools available to science and argued in favour of some and against others, to make science the best that it can be. This has a heavy emphasis on the future of science - as future potential _is_ the method. Kuhn's approach was to define science by what it is, like artists tend to do with things, which included the good, the bad, and the ugly - he focused on predicting the future of science by explaining the previous developments of sciences. This has a heavy emphasis on the past history of science - as history itself _is_ the method. These two approaches are diametrically opposed to each other and they are incompatible as they disagree at many fundamental levels.
@@afacere736 Kuhn was more objective because he explored all facets of the sciences, including the bad being passed off as good. Popper was biased and tried to only focus on the good.
@@afacere736 I have, I've read both. Popper makes excellent points, but he is not objective from the start as his intent was to remove the doubt that any scientist could ever fail to be objective whereas history is littered with science of bias or science of economics or science of genetic superiority. That said, Popper was brilliant and I agree with and learned from many of his concepts. I am in appreciation of both he and Kuhn, who have, in my opinion, made significant contributions to the history and philosophy of science and therefore science itself.
@Cd B If you think Popper's intent was to remove doubt you have severely misunderstood him. His whole thing was "critical rationalism" where every "source" of knowledge is valid but none holds authority over any other. This is just about as objectively doubtful as it's possible to get, Kuhn's historical perspective on the other hand put an authority on historical accounts of science; he was biased towards historical induction.
read imre lakatos, althusser, bachelard, fauerback. there are many thinkers in epistemology, many of them based on popper, either in agreement or disagreement with his demarcation criterion and falsificationism.
I have a sincere question. How does Popper overcome the same idea that fell logical positivism (ie that the scientific method cannot be used to verify the scientific method)? Falsification itself is self-refuting, as falsification is not subject to falsification. Is he ok with merely using the "paradigm" that falsification is true science? If so then Kuhn wins.
Hi John. Initially Popper wasn't explicit about this, but one of his students, W. W. Bartley III tried to deal with this issue in his book "Retreat to Commitment" where he develops the idea of pan-critical rationalism. Essentially, critical rationalism applied to itself. Peter Munz does a decent treatment of the issue, drawing on Bartley, in his book "Our Knowledge of the Growth of Knowledge".
i think what popper mean is that: logic can be positivism(u can verify deductively, eg. in philosophy debate ), it is just that science cannot be conducted logically in deductive sense. Therefore, science can only be falsified which means no 100%sure knowledge produced. I do not know whether i got it right, hope to get an answer
it's called circular logic, it doesn't hold up. This is precisely the circular form of validation that is endemic to pseudoscience and cargo cult science the Popper was invalidating. I swear to god, people should not be issued degrees in *anything* without a basic test of their gasp of logic.
Incommensurability applies to all fields of science: the assertion that Kuhn won the social sciences and Popper the natural sciences is ungrounded. Incommensurability and paradigms applies to Kepler and Brahe, to Galileo and the Ptolemaics/Catholics, as well as to different departments within the social sciences and the natural sciences and between them. Incommensurability also applies to the distinctions between observational language and theoretical language, if any distinctions are considered? The graph was somewhat contradictory: if Kuhn has 70,000+ publications to Popper's 51,000+, then how can Popper's line on the graph be greater than Kuhn's? The main difference between Popper and Kuhn is that Popper claimed that theories are tested by being compared and selected on the basis of methodological decisionism via falsifiability criteria and critical discussion, and not as to whether the theory mapped onto empirical reality in some correspondence. Kuhn takes this 'decisionism" and points out how theories that have been disproven in some way hang on for long periods of time through ad hoc modifications which eventually break down (perhaps thru Planck's Truth never triumphs - its opponents just die out). Max Planck was quoted in Kuhn SSR, "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."
Hi Fred, thanks for the comments. You're right in the comment about the natural/social science influence being ungrounded. Imagine the research someone would have to do to substantiate such a claim! I think that Malachi Hacohen makes that point in the introduction to his book on Popper's formative years. I can't recall his evidence off the top of my head, but knowing the general quality of his scholarship (which is off the charts) I am inclined to trust it to some degree. Also, on incommensurability, I've recently been reading more Feyerabend and I tend to prefer his version of the concept to Kuhn's.
MESSY CORROBORATION The difference between verification and falsification is that verification looks merely for the evidence stated in the hypothesis. If the hypothesis is 'all swans are white,' and the scientist looks out and observes only white swans then he takes this evidence as verifying the hypothesis. Falsification however is the event where the hypothesis is refuted by evidence of a black swan. Now, the scientists know that the hypothesis is false. In effect, Popper is saying that we cannot know by induction whether an hypothesis is truth, but we can know if it false and therefore we should set up falsification experiments or sincerity and severity tests. The definition of corroboration is messy: an observation statement supports an hypothesis when it follows from, agrees with, or is an instance of the hypothesis. However, for Popper this is not a severe test which attempts to refute the hypothesis and searches for counter-instances. Also, Popper stated that the term, 'degree of confirmation or corroboration' seems to reduce induction to probability which he thought was wrong because 'a degree of' does not lead to practical results. Where Carnap posited a degree of confirmation, Popper claimed that degree of corroboration meant in terms of 'logical content' and not 'amount of evidence.' Also, he claimed that corroboration of an hypothesis could increase if rival theories were falsified or refuted and where evidence emerged which was completely unexpected given the original conditions and background knowledge of the hypothesis and test statements. Popper was trying to differentiate inductive logic from probability logic. Popper is not a positivist in the sense of a naïve non-interpreting fact gathering unreflective rejecter of feedback processes. Popper however is positivist as an anti-metaphysical methodologist who demarcates good scientific knowledge from bad metaphysical knowledge in terms of standards of rationality, testability and inter-subjective requirements for objectivity, thus jettisoning subjectivity. Even if this distinction is not wholeheartedly embraced, to shift gears and roundly agree with other positivists that problem selection is the key to science, the most important issue, looks political. Popper claims to have destroyed logical positivism and yet he was a close associate of many of the Vienna Circle’s members. Popper’s “critique” of positivism was however itself critiqued by Feyerabend, Frisby and Adorno. Adorno's critique of positivism went further than Popper's. The world is inductive. Popper claims that there are different methods for substantiating the existence of facts. He does not mention the indefensible claims of a priori conventions. But, the verification that a person/object exists or has a persisting identity requires explanations of change, including changes to conventions unless contradiction is accorded truth, which is irrational. Anyway, Adorno is trying to point out the limits of positivists, empiricists, and Popper. Obviously, the issue is the """process""" in which individuals are/were liquidated which began with steps taken to make our methods of perception cope with degrees of chaos and contradiction. The failure of Popper to address those contexts where conventions and justifications were entirely annulled is the point: verification is not enough, falsification is not enough - explain the absence of persons, the changes in methods of using inductions which resulted in non-induction, in chaos, because there was no given explanations of the changes ..... Nor of the changes in society and reason. Popper is not rejecting induction; positivism is not simply induction, induction is part of the context of discovery. Induction is relevant and part of the scientific method! But, Popper rejects """verification""" as an invalid way to prove a theory. There was a drastic change in the societal totality, Adorno's main factor. Adorno agrees with Popper that problems are the priority in science, but Popper does not recognize the kinds of changes to the societal totality which obscured the social laws (which might be interpreted as natural rights of man or perhaps ""reason""). For example, Popper notoriously rejected both Marx and Freud!! David Piggott, if you are on Facebook, I would like to Friend you so that you might participate in my several conversations about this 'Philosophy of Science' topic.
9:14 "Kuhn is most popular in social science". Quite. Popper is for scientists, Kuhn provides comfort for pseudo scientists (or, as the presenter calls them 'social scientists'). 12:30 "Prescriptive ... of ... how scientists should conduct themselves". It is a description at how one produces a logically robust theory that conforms with reality. I supervised a PhD Psychology student in our Medical School (I was in Computer Science) and had to read around the subject. I was horrified at the Kuhnian Krap that Psychologists used in their 'theories'.
What's funny is that if you actually understood the theories or even watched the video, you'd realize that it is really improper to compare them in such a way. All sciences try to attain a Popper ideal in methodology... Kuhn is pointing out that a lot of science fails to question the central tenets of their field (i.e., their paradigms...)
@@josepharuguete6045 That's a critical theory type excuse. Popper never forbade questioning central tenants. He gave the prerequisites to overcome them. Failed philosopher pseudo scientists couldn't, so they created incredibly poor unfalsifiable replacement tenets that in no way match reality. You want to argue there was too much appeal to authority in academia, then sure. Except when you use that as a pretext to cheat instead of improve things, you become the much bigger problem.
@@sirellyn of course Popper never forbade questioning central tenets. You are proving my point. Popper designed the foundation on which all science is built. Kuhn was observing the process in science. Scientists have a tendency to operate within assumed paradigms that aren't proven. Just because we can question central tenets dont mean scientists do. I'm not sure about everything else you said. It's hard to understand the rest of your point because it seems tangential.
@@josepharuguete6045 well said and understand that scientists who have a problem with Kuhn are the very type he tried to expose; those who instead of trying to continue scientific work irrespective of being right or wrong. Many are actually quite biased and hold onto their theories above all else, regardless of how correct and incorrect they are.
You sound quite biased and lacking in objectivity, this proving Kuhn's model. I have 3 degrees in the sciences and I can tell you the thing I observed most over the years is exactly what Kuhn spoke of; people failing to be objective in favour of adhering to their scientific viewpoint for fear of being wrong.
Are there two sides? I don't see Kuhn/Popper as a binary proposition, and in reality few things are. The Kuhnian proposition is a high altitude observation that can accommodate within it a wide range of scientific practice, and has the elegance of seeming intuitive and logical at the same time. The elephant in the room that isn't discussed here is money. John Ioannidis's research is the bigger challenge to Popper's proposition than it is to Kuhn's, as it shows how science isn't practiced in an abstract, sterile environment.
Not sure about the application of these ideas in the religious context. Neither Popper nor Kuhn or any of their followers were really interested in this debate. Kuhn's ideas have been stretched to breaking point to support just about all forms of cultural relativism: a position he resolutely denied (see his 1970 essay in C&GK, and his 1969 postscript to SSR).
Thanks David for your quick reply. I agree that Kuhn denied cultural relativism in the way it is often defined (anything goes). But he did not deny cultural realities (paradigms). Religious is more meant in terms of abstract and 'absolute' versus pragmatic. I I'm not clear in my article, then please give me some clues where.
Perhaps I struggled with the translation. However, it's important to be clear that Popper only ever tried to distinguish science from pseudoscience. He never 'rejects' other forms of knowledge, but simply says that they aren't science. As for Kuhn, he actually argued that paradigms were more than pragmatic; they literally formed a person's world view which they could not see around. Paradigms have a real perceptual narrowing effect for Kuhn. One doesn't change paradigms with ease. In fact, both Lakatos and Feyerabend criticised Kuhn for likening paradigm-shifts with religious conversions. And this must all be tempered with the fact that Kuhn only ever wrote about a narrow period of post-enlightment astronomy, physics and chemistry!
I like your reaction. It shows that I should formulate with care. I agree that for Kuhn paradigms are world views (realities), that are much more than only concepts. As for what Popper saw as pseudo science I feel that for him rationality (western cultural logic) is leading. What if Muslims would say that Catholicism is a pseudo religion, with basics that are wrong? It is not weird to compare cultural logic with religion. A problem in the western world is that is forgotten that western reality is cultural and temporary. Rationality has many similarities with a religion. That Kuhn restricted paradigms to science is a pity (and I wonder why he did so), to see them as cultural makes more sense Maybe my site paradigm-shift-21st-century.nl/ more clearly situates the matter.
+Henk Tuten I don't know if you have time to listen to this but it sure would be neat if you did. mises.org/library/economic-science-and-austrian-method-0
I'm only marginally interested in philosophy and I realise the risks of going off topic, but the way, say, two theories compare should be premised on an epistemology of how theories compare in general ( or am I conflating too much epistemology and linguistic philosophy?) . A uniform method of comparison may be desirable, but in my very limited familiarity with philosophy, I tend to doubt we have a satisfactory situation in that respect. What I think is relevant, together with the unsustainability of "conventions before something is covened for a present or future time", is the unsustainability of the non necessity of conventions any time a theory, and more than that two comparable theories of any type are consistently formulated, discussed, explained or in any way put forth in a well-formed way. I got interested in this excellent discussion, along with some very good comments, and hope I haven't been too boring myself.
The problem with Popper is that he tried so hard to make natural sciences(namely physicis, the general theory of relativity) the paradigma for other sciences including socials and even philosophy
That wasn't a problem, it was a prognosis. The "soft" sciences don't contain the same rigor, and should be given far FAR less consideration, if any at all. If you don't agree, I have this wonderful socially constructed car I'd like to sell you...
@@cdb5001 The entire point of the scientific method is that the bias doesn't matter or is overridden by the process. The mere fact that ANYONE should be able to challenge a falsifiable theory (deductively) determines that.
@@sirellyn I agree with you in theory, that is the point of the scientific method, but remember that science is practiced by very fallible, biased and corruptible humans. Just look at eugenics for an easy example of agenda-driven science. If you think this type of science is gone from practice today, I'd suggest reading about the silos and factions that are still a very real part of the scientific community today.
@@cdb5001 There has to be a term for "making a valuable observation, but making an insane conclusion/course of action from that." If you know of it, I would be grateful. This seems to be a core component of most scientism. Kuhns observations were valuable. But the suggested courses of actions coming from it are insane! It doesn't matter that the humans are fallible or corruptible. It MATTERS that the populace uses appeal to authority or argumentum ad populum as reasoning believing there is a "truth" rather than verisimilitude. Regarding eugenics, we can cover the vaccine, sterilizing uyghers, sterilizing trans kids, human cloning, and you can technically even fit abortion in here. All of these have heavy "ought's" you might justifiably feel. But you can see how wanting one conflicts with another. And it's not the job of science for ought. As soon as you make it that, it becomes FAR worse.
I am from the social sciences so perhaps I have been socialised to think so! In that case I would think popper-ians have been socialised to think so too. But this analysis that I am doing right now, seems Kuhnian. SO this is an ongoing debate in my own head.
Allan Jones There's no confusion on my part. The confusion lies with the idiot that I responded to. You're taking a post that was not meant for you personally. Which logical fallacy is that?
People think of academia or science as a meritocracy of ideas, but it certainly is not. There are always powerful vested interests in academia for the current paradigm; it is just like politics, corporate culture, etc. The success of a new paradigm spells their demise and they will do everything in their power to quell the revolutionaries. Had I not seen it first hand working in research, I would not have believed it.
Reasoning based on evidence is superor to reasoning without because its veracity is falsifiable. Relativism is a self refuting logical fallacy, which is epistemologically inferior.
Man, spice up your delivery. Also too much text on slides. I want to watch this, but I had t sit through three lab meetings this week and im done with the monotony.
