Roush+Week+13+assignment

Kuhn’s //The Structure of Scientific Revolutions// is an attempt to explain how and why science progresses, and seems as though it were a response to the question “What is this science?” He starts answering this question in a very logical place. If science exists, then it must be made of something. For Kuhn, the things that science is made of are paradigms. Paradigms are the models which we construct to explain and make predictions about the world. All of the paradigms put together makes up normal science. Normal science is the accepted way of viewing scientific information and performing new scientific investigations. This distinction allows for Kuhn’s next argument which is that normal science seeks to preserve itself. Rather than the normal view of scientific investigation where existing theories, no matter how well established they are, will be thrown out if they do not fit the data, Kuhn’s model of scientific endeavor says that these theories that seem to be incompatible with the data will be only modified, retaining their essence, so that they fit with the new data. In his discourse, Kuhn illustrates this point with the example of classical astronomy. Things start with the idea that all of the heavens rotate around the Earth. This idea demanded a model, and so a model was invented. This model had many problems when it came to making predictions. Rather than discard this model, scientists of the time simply modified the model. They kept the essence of the model, i.e. that everything orbited the Earth. It was not until Copernicus that a pheasible model was devised which abandoned this idea in favor of the idea that the Earth and the other planets orbit the Sun. This proposition was simultaneously a destruction of normal science and a creation of normal science. This new normal science excluded the paradigm of an Earth-centered universe and included the paradigm of a Sun-centered universe. The interesting part of Kuhn’s model of science is that it says that normal science wants to preserve itself. This happens because “ science students accept theories on the authority of teacher and text, not because of evidence .” Kuhn is basically describing scientific education as brainwashing where students are told that the world is a certain way and cannot be any other way, lest the student get a lower grade on their test. However, there seems no other way to relate scientific information between generations. This instituted bias in the students creates an inherent stagnation in normal science. This bias in normal science suggests that it is impossible to know whether or not a particular paradigm is actually correct in any sort of absolute sense because it could just be our bias that tells us that this paradigm is correct. Kuhn’s model includes many points that seem to be consistent with scientific revolutions in history. However, Kuhn’s model of scientific revolutions does not explain why science changes in the first place. Why is normal science constantly changing, as opposed to reaching an eventual point where there is a collective and exasperated proclamation of “Good enough.” from the scientists? It seems as though Kuhn’s model is incomplete without this idea of a driving force to science, and so Kuhn’s model perhaps will not be included in the next normal science.