STS 2

WHAT IS SCIENCE? NORMAL SCIENCE? SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION? PARADIGM?

STS 1 X45 GROUP 2 – ADRIANO | OCAMPO | URBI

Thomas Kuhn

- Born on July 18, 1922, in Cincinnati, Ohio, United States

- Graduated summa cum laude with his bachelor’s degree in physics at Harvard
University (MSc and Ph.D.)
- Wrote “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions”

What is Science? 1

- “Think about thinking” to examine Science

- A good science deals with empirical knowledge, peer review, and openness to
refutation.
A. Testing Ideas (Experimentation)
a. Mathematical proof: a step-by-step examination of assumptions,
data, and conclusions.
b. Scientific Method: knowledge acquired by examining how the
Universe appears to an individual’s senses.
c. Inductive Reasoning: making predictions based on past experience
or observations.
d. Theory of Falsification: Popper suggests that science finds facts not
by verifying statements but by falsifying them.

Problem with Karl Popper’s Falsification

● Falsification alone cannot distinguish science from non-science;

● Cannot explain the origins of the hypothesis;
● Science doesn’t progress through falsification;
● Doesn’t explain scientific revolutions and discoveries that
transform understanding.
B. Ways of Seeing (Observation)
a. Paradigm Shifts: Thomas Kuhn cited that science doesn’t develop by
orderly accumulation of facts and theories but by revolution.
i. Gestalt-switch - switch before and after the perception of an
image
b. Lakatos’ Progressive and Degenerative Research:
i. Progressive - the discovery of facts that were previously
unknown
ii. Degenerative - science must be modified to cope with
inconvenient facts
c. Relativism: ideas are not universal or absolute; differs from culture to
culture
d. Socially constructed: observations are influenced by cultures, values,
and beliefs that shape one’s choice of what science to focus on;
intellectual frameworks within which scientists worked.
C. TRUST AND TRUTH: Science and Non-Science
a. Sociobiology: evolutionary psychology, the study of people’s patterns
of behavior, used to justify types of behavior that are generally
considered unacceptable.
b. The phenomenon of Consciousness: both philosophers and
scientists claim to hold the key to understanding consciousness.

What is Normal Science?

- Leads to the recognition of anomalies and to crises. 2

- “Normal science doesn’t aim at novelty but at clearing up the status quo. It tends to
discover what it expects to discover” – philosopher Ian Hacking 4
- A community of researchers who share a common intellectual framework engages
in solving puzzles thrown up by discrepancies (anomalies) – Thomas Kuhn 4

Kuhn’s Description of Normal Science 4

● is necessary for the accumulation of scientific knowledge but it doesn’t

typically lead to scientific revolutions or paradigm shifts.

2
● “Puzzle-solving” with a predetermined picture/solution;
● Requires great ingenuity and sustained effort to solve.

What is Scientific Revolution?

- Thomas Kuhn explains the scientific revolution as a transformative period in science

when there is a shift in paradigms, adopting new ways of perceiving and interacting
with the world. 3

Development of the Sciences as a Cycle 2

- Kuhn saw the development of sciences

as a cyclic process. It starts with an
existing paradigm that undergoes a period
of normal science, where researchers
articulate how it can be applied to specific
situations.
- Throughout this process, anomalies—
deviations from the expected outcomes—
arise.
- When these anomalies accumulate and
become more frequent, they become
crises that question the current paradigm.
- These crises can only be resolved
through revolution or change in worldview, leading to the shift to a new paradigm
that can address the anomalies.
- Once the anomalies are solved, the process repeats with a new phase of normal
science.

Paradigm Shift

- According to Kuhn, science does not develop by the orderly accumulation of facts and
theories, but by dramatic revolutions referred to as paradigm shifts. 1
- When paradigms shift, whole sets of questions and answers get dropped as irrelevant,
rather than incorporated into the new era of normal science. 2

3
Gestalt Switch

● Kuhn states that the shift between an old

paradigm and a new paradigm is dramatic,
sudden, and unstructured, similar to that of a
gestalt switch. One cannot reject a worldview
without replacing it with the other.
● For instance, in the duck-rabbit gestalt switch
image, one cannot reject the idea that the image
shows a duck, without first replacing it with the
idea that it shows a rabbit or vice versa.

Incommensurability of Paradigms
● Kuhn contends that the worlds before and after a paradigm shift are different or in
his words, “incommensurable.” 1
○ Being incommensurable means that experiments done under the old
paradigm may be worthless under the new one. 1
● In other words, scientists have no way to compare concepts on either side of a
scientific revolution. According to Kuhn, each concept draws meaning from separate
webs of ideas, practices, and results. Hence, no common measure could be found
with which to relate them. 2

Examples of Paradigm Shift

Galileo’s Pendulum 3
● Galileo’s new perspective on motion challenged the existing Aristotelian paradigm
and transformed the understanding of a falling stone into a pendulum
● Aristotle’s Paradigm: Aristotle interpreted the swinging stone as a constrained fall,
measuring its weight, the vertical height it was raised to, and the time it took to
come to rest.
● Galileo’s Paradigm: Galileo approached the swinging stone with a different
perspective. He measured weight, radius, angular displacement, and time per swing,
leading to the discovery of the laws of pendulum motion.

4
● Galileo’s paradigm shift was a response to the anomalies and crises from the
prevailing Aristotelian framework. His paradigm was influenced by Archimedes’
work on floating bodies, the impetus theory, and Neoplatonism, allowing him to
discover pendulum regularities that did not exist in the Aristotelian paradigm.

Copernican Revolution
● Before the Copernican Revolution, people viewed the universe through the
geocentric model, which proposed that the Earth was at the center of the universe,
and the sun, moon, and planets revolved around it.
● Nicolas Copernicus challenged the geocentric model of the universe and proposed
the heliocentric model, placing the sun at the center of the universe.
● Thomas Kuhn explained that when paradigms shift, our perception of the world also
changes. In the case of the Copernican Revolution, astronomers shifted from seeing
the Earth as the center of the universe (geocentric) to perceiving the sun as the
center (heliocentric). This paradigm shift fundamentally changed the way we
understand the universe and the motion of the celestial bodies.

To conclude, scientific revolutions have had a profound impact on human knowledge and
the understanding of the natural world. Scientists, like Galileo and Copernicus, shift
perspectives and adopt new frameworks to discover previously unknown regularities. This
revolution brings about profound changes in scientific understanding that advance human
knowledge and drive progress and shape the way we perceive the world.

What is Paradigm?
- a paradigm is a set of guiding concepts, theories, and methods on which most members of
the relevant community agree.
- In the book “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” by Thomas Kuhn, the word “paradigm”
was used vaguely. British philosopher Margaret Masterman famously isolated 21 distincts
ways in which Kuhn used the term throughout his book.
- In the later editions of his book, Kuhn simplified his intended meanings into two clusters:
(1) A paradigm refers to a scientific community’s reigning theories and methods;
(2) A paradigm refers to exemplars or model problems
- more original and more important

5
- Kuhn believes that rather than memorizing explicit rules or theorems, scientists
learn by:
● Immersive apprenticeship
● Honing their “tacit knowledge” such as by working through large
collections of exemplars
- It has a cyclic nature.
A field of study matures by forming a paradigm → a period of “normal science”, during
which researchers further articulate what the paradigm might imply for specific situations →
anomalies arise (findings differ from expectations) → the field enters a state of crisis (once
enough anomalies have accumulated) → revolution and inauguration of a new paradigm →
then the whole process repeats with a new phase of normal science

Example: Examine the paradigm cycle that happened from the geocentric to the heliocentric
model of the universe
● Forming a paradigm: Ptolemy introduced the geocentric model
● A period of normal science: Some philosophers started questioning the model
● Anomalies: The “natural” expectation for ancient societies was that the sun, moon, and
the planets travel in uniform and “perfect” circular motion, however it was observed that
the paths of the mentioned heavenly bodies were not circular—they were elliptical
● Crisis: Different observations about the geocentric model accumulated
● Revolution: Copernicus introduced the heliocentric model because he realized that the
observed orbits of planets made sense when he placed the Sun, rather than the Earth, in
the center of the Solar System

6
References
1
Cross, M. (2000, February 19). The Truth is Out There.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg16522267-100-the-truth-is-out-there/

2
Kaiser, D. (2012, April 12). In retrospect: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Nature,
484, 164-166. https://www.nature.com/articles/484164a.pdf

3
Kuhn, T. (1962). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, [Chapter 10 abridged, 8 pages].

4
Naughton, J. (2012, August 19). Thomas Kuhn: The man who changed the way the world
looked at science. The Guardian.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/aug/19/thomas-kuhn-structure-scientifi
c-revolutions