The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

This is such a nice, beautiful philosophical piece of work, like actually

Muy interesante, un incentivo a repensar las cosas, no siempre las cosas son como se cree solo por que así a sido desde antes, a veces es necesario repensarlas y puede que descubramos o teoricemos algo “nuevo”, bueno, y si no, ya solo el hecho de pensar y analizarlo es entretenido e interesante...

An interesting read, a must-read for people in this field, perhaps. The concepts presented here are not much harder to understand, though Kuhn's style is a little confusing.

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn is not an easy read. It is a mixture of fascinating summary paragraphs hidden in semi-insider language surrounding science. This is not so much a critique, this is a book on the philosophy and history of science, but a warning that it will take some work to read, especially if you aren't a scientist.

This book was nominated as one of the All-Time 100 Best Nonfiction Books and here is what they said about it:

“Thomas S. Kuhn didn't invent the phrase paradigm shift, but he popularized it and gave it the meaning it has today. He also triggered one when he published The Structure Of Scientific Revolutions in 1962...After Kuhn, we can no longer ignore the fact that however powerful science is, it's as flawed as the scientists who do it.”

From the back cover of the book
I first read it as a freshman in college and decided to read it again...

Full Review: https://thetempleblog.com/2022/03/26/book-review-the-structure-of-scientific-revolutions/

I went into this book aware of the enormous hype around it, so naturally I was prepared to be - if not disappointed - somewhat underwhelmed, but boy was I whelmed! Kuhn's book (essay?) is the perfect illustration of how seemingly banal theories can become illuminating when fleshed out in repetitive detail. It's also an exemplar of skillful writing (apart from the odd sentence with one too many parts), exact choice of scope, careful thought, and brilliant insight.

In conclusion, the hype is, without a doubt, justified!

I read this book a little over a month ago and have no memories of it. It was OK I guess?

Este libro cambio mi forma de pensar acerca de la ciencia. Muchas veces se cree que es un camino con una meta definida en donde cada descubrimiento es un escalón en una escalera que nos acerca, sin embargo, se trata de una labor que siempre debe de ser analizada dentro de un contexto histórico, pues, como todas las cosas humanas, depende del cristal con que se mira, existen tiempos estériles, etapas obscuras, procesos que deben de llevarse a cabo antes de que sea posible dar el siguiente paso. Creo que Thomas Kuhn hizo una labor excelente al escribir este libro pues el análisis del proceso es necesario para entender el estado actual de las cosas e intentar definir un estado futuro favorable.

If I could only give one anecdote to explain what I think is wrong with the current state of the engineering educational system it's that I only ever encountered this book in my history classes, I doubt anyone in my science classes was even aware of its existence.

The premise of the book is that science doesn't progress by the cumulative addition of knowledge, but instead advances by major shifts in paradigms that replace, rather than increment, large parts of previous paradigms.

To begin with, scientific research in a specific subject is carried out within the bounds of a generally accepted framework that defines what scientists already know about the field, as well as the questions that remain unanswered. This is what Kuhn calls a paradigm. A paradigm is useful because it defines puzzles that need to be solved and gives a set rules for them to be solved in. Over time, the paradigm is more fully explored and is broken down into smaller and more specific problems. To solve them, scientists develop specialized equipment and detailed experiments are carried out. Scientists experiment not to generate an unknown result, but with a hypothesis that has an expected result. The paradigm they're working under has helped them predict results and expect an answer.

Eventually however, problems are discovered that can't be effectively solved within the rules of the paradigm. At first, these types of problems can be worked around by making adjustments in rules of the paradigm. Ultimately, as it is explored more deeply and the rules become more complex, a problem or problems arise that simply cannot be answered elegantly with the paradigm. As these difficult problems gain notice, they become recognized as the problems in most urgent need of a solution. When there is a big problem like this it can either be ignored until better equipment is available, made to fit by adjusting the current paradigm or, most interestingly, it can lead to the development of a new theory, or group of theories that attempt to solve the problem. As alternate competing theories are proposed to address the crises, eventually one gains enough traction among scientists to become the new paradigm.

One of the examples used in the book is how Einstein's relativity became the paradigm that replaced Newtonian physics. What happened was not that Newtonian physics was found to be outdated and immediately replaced with the theory of relativity, in fact that theory is still useful within a large number of applications today. Instead, it was recognized that there is a very limited set of parameters in which Newtonian physics is accurate–specifically for calculating interactions between objects moving at relatively low velocities, but that outside those parameters, Newtonian physics will lead to incorrect assumptions. The theory of relativity solves the same problems that Newtonian physics does, but it also works with objects moving at high velocities. Rather than just building upon Newtonian physics incrementally, relativity supplanted large parts of it, even as scientists recognized that parts of Newtonian physics remain useful in certain contexts.

To me, a non-scientist, rather than being controversial, this is a really useful way to think about science, and beyond science to how change and progress occur in almost any field. To a scientist, I can see how Kuhn's ideas are controversial. They mean that what scientists see and look for in observational and experimental data is not analyzed and recorded completely objectively but that scientists are heavily biased by what they believe and expect they're going to find. It ‘accuses' scientists of viewing data and the experiments they choose to perform relatively, rather than objectively or positively (there is a long and hairy philosophical argument on relative knowledge that I will avoid getting into). Kuhn, rather than criticizing scientists for their subjective view on data, believes that viewing science this way is unavoidable, and in fact beneficial because it trains scientists to recognize patterns in data and to become adept with the data that they deal with. When a scientist is proficient at viewing data within the bounds of a paradigm, they are, in turn, well-prepared to view anomalies in the way their paradigm interprets data. This leads to the tough problems that are escalated to criseses in the paradigm and eventually, to the development of new paradigms.