Some of the more 'radical' ideas of Thomas Kuhn are introduced, including the incommensurability of paradigms, the theory-ladenness of observation, and the underdetermination of theory by evidence.
Very interesting lectures. The more that I listen, the more that I think this can apply to any world view, not simply the scientific paradigm. A) You have a world view B) Anomalies arise C) Enter crisis mode to find explanations for anomalies D) If explanations are unsatisfactory, a paradigm shift occurs and your world view changes. This almost perfectly explains my deconversion process.
That was surprisingly interesting. By which I mean that I was surprised that it was interesting at all, then surprised by how interesting it was! And really well explained. Thanks for feeding my brain :-)
God dammit, SR. I just wanted to take a peak at this video to see what the subject was even about, and now I'm glued to it, and must watch the whole thing.
I'm a little confused about whether Kuhn things there are only one paradigm or more competing paradigms at a time. In the first Lakatos video you stresses that there can be only one paradigm at a time in a giving field, but here you talk about more competing paradigms at a time and how to choice among one paradigm over another. Is the point that it's only under crisis science, and when a new paradigm emerge, that there can be more than one paradigm? Or is it rather a confusing about have to view the term paradigm - in the broad sense or as a 'exemplar'
Re General Relativity (GR) providing both better predictability AND an explanation: While GR provides an "explanation" of how gravity occurs by offering up a mechanism that generates the empirically observation effect we call gravity, it also doesn't "explain" why mass distorts spacetime. GR simply *assumes* mass distorts spacetime. In effect, it replaces Newton's unexplained gravity with, among other things, an unexplained mechanism that causes mass to distort spacetime. Perhaps the next paradigm shift in this field will be a theory that produces more accurate predictions AND explains why mass appears to distort spacetime.
A great, current example of this kind of scientific controversy where both sides have supporting evidence and the side one favours really depends on personal preference or loyalties is the debate over whether the Golgi body is a stable organelle or matures cargo traffics through it. The main players in the debate have held their positions for years and even when it looks like one model is more likely than another, new evidence always comes up to challenge this, so people have to just rely on their instincts and preferences.
cus that's always gonna be the case ... but for the people who's only tool to understand reality is science, of course they are gonna try to deny the true nature of science .. and say that science comes comes to absolutes
I believe we're in social and economic and political crisis. But like how the Enlightenment shifted the paradigm from religious thinking, that had a big impact on our social as well. How we related to one another and what not, which shaped what our relationships with other and ourselves and our culture looked like. So did quantum mechanics, such as the Enlightment era did, shift the paradigm and that has bled into these other aspects? Postmodernism, the crumbling previously trusted institutions, social aspects and relationships like romantic relationships or sexuality or gender...or is it sort of like a feedback loop, coinciding with the internet and all those other things, like postmodern or post structuralist philosophy...fuckimg fascinating
(cont'd) (2) It's true that scientists will attempt to alter existing theories to account for contradictory data in order to hold onto an existing theory (or paradigm, if you prefer). That's where you come up with something like epicycles. But at a certain point, the weight of contrary evidence simply can't be supported by existing theories and those who accept new theories that better account for that evidence aren't the same as people who've embraced a new faith.
Those are two factors. And they can come apart. Newtonian gravity had great predictive capability, but zero explanatory capability; Cartesian gravity had great explanatory capability but poor predictive capability.
@@Kimani_White Sure, but that means nothing to a scientist in 1700 trying to figure out with theory to go with then. "Don't worry, in 200 years a new theory will come along that gets us both" is cold comfort.
@@SisyphusRedeemed Theories are just models of some piece of reality. Newtonian mechanics was objectively a massive improvement over what they had available at the time, and it's still serviceable today in many areas. It's a good model; GR is just an objectively better model of how the universe works. Heck, and there's bound to be ways of explicating physics which do an even better job than present day GR and QM. Scientists will be able to know they have such a theory if they can put its predictions to the test and they accurately account for things that the current theories can't. If they let other factors get in the way of that, that's more of a _"them"_ problem than an actual epistemic hurdle.
If the science within the context of the paradigm forces a rejection of the paradigm itself, we don't also throw out the methodology necessarily, because it may have its own paradigm.
An apple is a false fruit, the "wrong" part of the flower is the one that grows. (obs.: I'm not trying to make any kind of counter point, just giving a little information)
But this seems a bit contradictory. How does one go about "losing one's faith" in a paradigm? If one accepts a paradigm, and if, according to Kuhn, those who do so are unable to see beyond the limits imposed by it, how does one ever undergo a paradigm shift? Those who accepted Newtonian physics did, in fact, at a certain point, accept that it was not accurately describing the universe at certain scales and it had to be rejected in favor of a model that did provide a better description.
Since when do paradigms require faith? Is it not possible to view the same picture, young women or old hag, depending on your desires of the moment? Do I really have faith that it is an old hag and not a young women when I view it that way?
When physicists talk to each other, mass remains a property that doesn't change, even in particle physics. But when physicists talk to dummies, mass is a quantity that increases when particles gain speed. That immutable quantity, they call to our faces, "rest mass". They speak a different language to us than they speak to each other.
~9:30, you talk about the incompatibility of Newton's and Einstein's definitions of terms like "mass." Isn't this the reason for operational definitions? "Mass" is that which is measured by a scale, and "time" by a clock You have to resort to the paradigms to reach agreement on how well an actual scale approximates an idealized one, but operational definitions allow agreement over which observations are anomalous w.r.t. a paradigm so is it really the case that paradigms precede definitions?
It seems to me that we are in the middle of a paradigm shift in the social sciences with the debate over gender identity. It seems to me that we no longer have a common language to resolve the issue.
There seems to be a real problem with Kuhn's approach here. Physicists had no problem moving from Newton's view of the world to Einstein's because each described a distinctly different universe that experimental observation could resolve. If they each described an observationally identical universe, than Kuhn might be correct but that's not the case.
I can see that you can't rule in a paradigm experimentally, but surely experimentation could rule out a whole paradigm, especially with time. Do you agree? Is that possible? -- or not because the rules of experiment are also mandated by a paradigm?
if i am tracking i know scientist switching in a normal day from one paradime to another and back again. is there any philosophy on this phenomemon? I am in the proces of going through this playlist on the hisory of the philosophy of schience. so if it is alreddy talked about in this series then il find it, if not can anyone answer?
No, nothing that obvious. His point is that if you accept a given paradigm you won't be ABLE to see the differences. It is only people who loose faith in the paradigm that will see the differences. And it is only an act of faith that gets people to rally around a new paradigm, in which those differences are explained.
(cont'd) (2) In the same way, a universe in which the sun, the planets and the stars move around the earth attached to crystal spheres isn't observationally identical to one in which the earth and the planets move around the sun in elliptical orbits and the stars are at vast differences. Observations can distinguish between these differing views. Is Kuhn simply saying that there are moments in history where the evidence is such that some are convinced and others are not?
(cont'd) (3) Well, on that front, there are still people who believe that the earth is flat and 5,000 years old. While reason and evidence and experiment are the tools by which scientists are convinced of the truth of a claim, the state of "being convinced" is never a standardized or objective one any more than the process by which everyone on a jury comes to be convinced that a defendant is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. For various reasons, some people need more convincing that others.
5:00 This segment defines why a "new paradigm", is rejected by the True Believers, of the old paradigm. Example: We are born with CAMERA EYES! Wrong! At birth all eyes are controll systems, and control their refractive STATE, to their AVERAGE of Accommodation. ( The Dynamic Eye Paradigm. ) Try to argue this issue with an Optometrist.
MnemoHistory a later lecture in this series focuses primarily on Feyeraband. He was a post- Kuhnian philosopher, so it makes sense that Kuhn had to be covered first
If Newton’s “mass” has a different meaning than Einstein’s, couldn’t Einstein give another name to his “mass” to avoid the conflict with Newton’s conception of mass?
Any knowledge, matter how novel, is never a first, totally independent of previous knowledge/paradigm. I am referring to Newtonian and Einsteinian physics/paradigm, it seems Einstein significantly modified Newtonian physics rather than revolutionise it.
Eh, 'faith' is probably not the right word (though it is one Kuhn uses). The idea is simply that it is not a rational determination, but rather a perspective, a point of view, a Gestalt.
I'm confused, I was under the impression that a Paradigm at crisis point brought on by evidence was enough to switch over to another Paradigm given time, but here you're saying Kuhn said there was no evidential reason?
Neither 'moderate Kuhn' nor 'radical Kuhn' think that evidence alone is sufficient to determine which paradigm to choose. Evidence is always construed within a paradigm, so you need more than just evidence to decide between two paradigms. Evidence that is incompatible with the current paradigm can push us into crisis science, but it cannot resolve the crisis because evidence doesn't make any sense until a new paradigm is in place. The new paradigm has to be decided upon on the basis of other factors ('moderate Kuhn' says things like simplicity, fecundity, explanatory scope, etc.; 'radical Kuhn' says it's more like a religious conversion.)
science is just too flawed and inadequate to come even close to explaining reality .. especially something that is beyond physical. And of course you have presuppositionsit paradigms within science that can lead you towards understanding the reality through naturalism and through creationism (if you want it to call it that) ... but if you are saying that you don't start with presuppositions ...then you are just out and out ignorant
