Understanding Slow Motion, 5. November 2006

If you ever wanted to know why scientific discovery proceeds in slow motion and has difficulties in overturning established ideas - read Kuhn. His emphasis on the psychological and social side of science makes the difference to other explanations of scientific progress.There will still be Einsteins and Plancks revolutionising the way we think about the world, but they remain the exceptions.

      The structure of postmodernist nonsense, 21. Dezember 2003

If there's an answer (and there may not be an answer) then Kuhn hasn't found it. Postmodernistists who do not know science but who like to 'criticize' science often cite this book. Have they understood it? I haven't, because the argument makes no sense. I do understand physics, which does. Kuhn was not really a working scientist, and cannot describe what scientists do (see, however, the beautiful essays on creativity by Einstein, Hadamaard, and Poincare). Consider the following: a successlul speculator cannot even explain sensibly how he makes money (witness Soros's book "The Alchemy of Finance"). How can a nonscientist, or even a scientist, be expected account 'systematically' for the wonder of scientific discovery?

       Pragmatism without the name, 31. Juli 2000

If you could somehow communicate to a newborn, and tell him or her something as simple as "The sun will rise at 6 am," the child would be in a daze. "Sun?""6?" Kuhn in his book is specific to science, but the implication is that everything we take for granted in society has been constructed. Everything we consider to be "natural" standards: time, distance, taste, language are all socially constructed, and therefore are subject to criticism. However, Kuhn, like Pragmatists, sees science as both potentially beneficial and potentially harmful. The benefits from science are clear: things like medecine, however the harms, such as scientific justification for nazism and racism, are very clear as well. In short, Kuhn tells us to be cautious, and not accept science as fact as society tends to do, as science, like everything else, is socially constructed.

      Already shown to be wrong -- historical value only., 30. Juli 2000

Someone interested enough to look up this book could more profitably spend their time with a copy of Stove's "Anything Goes: Origins of the Cult of Scientific Irrationalism"

In it, the author shows how the philosophies of Kuhn, Lakatos, Feyerabend (all derivative of Karl Popper) are all dependent on a single unexpressed assumption implicit in the reasoning of Hume.

The hidden assumption takes the form of a logical error in that it assumes an exegetical negative which has not and cannot be proven.

Thus, Hume's inductive skepticism, mainstream 20th century science philosophy, and ideas derived, from it are based on a logical error of Hume.

Stove traces the acceptance of this error to Popper's need to construct a defense against the future recurrence of the "catastrophic" fall of Newtonianian physics. He analyzes how Kuhn and others structure their language and arguments so as to make their irrationalism seem plausible, even delving into the force behind the peculiar errors of deduction that pepper their arguments.

"Structure of Scientific Revolutions" will continue to be referenced indefinately, partly because it has been taught to uncritical students who echo it, but mostly because it serves the political interests of postmodernists and feminists. In actuality, it belongs in the remainder-bin of historical curiosities ... basically, junk from which only an enormous amount of mischief can flow.

       Enduring Classic on the Hard Truth about Changing Minds, 29. Mai 2000

Two points are worthy of emphasis: 1) the paradigm shift is always forced and 2) until the paradigm shift occurs, always suddenly, the incumbents can comfortably explain everything with their existing paradigm. There will be many from the current "laissez faire" academics without accountability environment who would be critical of this book, but the fact is that it's fundamentals are on target; as the sociology of knowledge has shown time and time again, "thinkers" are nepotistic, incestuous, and generally lazy, as well as mono-lingual and culturally-constrained, and it takes a major shock-wave to push any given intellectual domain up to the next plateau.