Fifty years of Kuhn
A tale of unrealized potential and diminished expectations in the history, philosophy and social studies of science
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.52712/issn.1850-0013-661Keywords:
Thomas Kuhn, scientific revolutions, social studies of scienceAbstract
Kuhn’s theory of scientific change undoubtedly turned out to be much more influential than its author had anticipated. Kuhn saw it as applying mainly to the physical sciences, especially when Newtonian mechanics served as the paradigmatic theory -which is to say, roughly 1620 to 1920. Indeed, Kuhn’s examples from chemistry cease after the mid- 19th century, his discussion of physics ends in the 1920s and he does not discuss the biological or social sciences at all. Yet Kuhn was more influential in the fields that he did not discuss. Much of that is due to the politically evocative language associated with ‘scientific revolutions’, especially in the context of student unrest in the late 1960s, though Kuhn made a point of discouraging all such associations. Indeed, in retrospect Kuhn’s refusal to comment on —let alone condemn— the complicity of science in the ‘military- industry complex’of the period appears striking. His interest in science lay exclusively in its status as a self-organizing, self-contained mode of inquiry. But despite the many misguided attempts to harness Kuhn’stheory of scientific revolutions to revolutionary politics, his theory remains politically interesting for at least four reasons that will be fully explained throughout this paper.
Downloads
References
ANDERSEN, H. (2001): “Critical Notice: Kuhn, Conant and Everything - A Full or Fuller Account”, Philosophy of Science, vol. 68, pp. 258-62.
BRINTON, C. (1952): The Anatomy of Revolution, Nueva York, Random House.
BRUSH, S. (1975): “Should History of Science Be Rated X?”, Science, vol. 183, pp. 1164-83.
CECCARELLI, L. (2001): Shaping Science with Rhetoric, Chicago, University of Chicago Press.
CECCARELLI, L. (2011): ‘Manufactured Scientific Controversy: Science, Rhetoric, and Public Debate’. Rhetoric and Public Affairs14: 195-228.
CHASE, A. (2003): Harvard and the Unabomber: The Education of an American Terrorist,Nueva York, Norton.
DONOVAN, A., LAUDAN, L. y LAUDAN, R. (1988): Scrutinizing Science,Dordrecht, Kluwer.
DUPRÉ, J. (2012): “Evolutionary Theory’s Welcome Crisis”, Project Syndicate. Disponible en: http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/evolutionary-theory-s- welcome-crisis-by-john-dupre.
ECONOMIST (2010): “Oblique strategies: A new look at the landscape of climate politics calls for subtler and more thoughtful approaches”. Disponible en: http://www.economist.com/node/16099521.
ELSTER, J. (1983): Sour Grapes: Studies in the Subversion of Rationality,Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
FRIEDMAN, M. (2000): AParting of the Ways: Carnap, Cassirer, and Heidegger, Chicago, Open Court Press.
FULLER, S. (1988): Social Epistemology, Bloomington, Indiana University Press.
FULLER, S. (1992a): “Being There with Thomas Kuhn: A Parable for Postmodern Times”, History and Theory, vol. 31, nº 3: pp. 241-75.
FULLER, S. (1992b): “Epistemology Radically Naturalized: Recovering the Normative, the Experimental, and the Social”, en R. Giere (ed.): Cognitive Models of Science, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, pp. 427-459.
FULLER, S. (1993). Philosophy of Science and Its Discontents, Nueva York, Guilford Press.
FULLER, S. (2000a): The Governance of Science: Ideology and the Future of the Open Society, Milton Keynes, Open University Press.
FULLER, S. (2000b): Thomas Kuhn: APhilosophical History for Our Times,Chicago, University of Chicago Press.
FULLER, S. (2001): “Review of Friedman”, British Journal for the History of Science.
FULLER, S. (2003): Kuhn vs. Popper: The Struggle for the Soul of Science, Cambridge, Icon Books.
FULLER, S. (2004): “The Case of Fuller vs. Kuhn”, Social Epistemology,vol. 18, pp. 3-49.
FULLER, S. (2006): The Philosophy of Science and Technology Studies,Londres, Routledge.
FULLER, S. (2007a): The Knowledge Book: Key Concepts in Science, Culture, Society, Durham y Montreal, Acumen and Queens-McGill University Press.
FULLER, S. (2007b): New Frontiers in Science and Technology Studies, Londres, Routledge.
FULLER, S. (2008a): Dissent over Descent: Intelligent Design’s Challenge to Darwinism, Cambridge, Icon.
FULLER, S. (2008b): “Science Studies Goes Public: A Report on an Ongoing Performance”, Spontaneous Generations, vol. 2, nº 1: pp. 11-21. Disponible en: http://hep.oise.utoronto.ca/index.php/SpontaneousGenerations/article/view/5069/190 2.
FULLER, S. (2008c): “The Normative Turn: Counterfactuals and a Philosophical Historiography of Science”, Isis,vol. 99, pp. 576-584.
FULLER, S. (2011): “Does History Matter to the Science Studies Disciplines? A Case for Giving the Past Back Its Future”, Journal of the Philosophy of History,vol. 5, pp. 562-585.
GALISON, P. y STUMP, D. (1996): The Disunity of Science: Boundaries, Contexts, and Power,Palo Alto, Stanford University Press.
GATTEI, S. (2003): “The Kuhn Controversy”, Social Epistemology, vol. 17, nº 2-3.
GELLNER, E. (1998): Language and Solitude: Wittgenstein, Malinowski and the Habsburg Dilemma,Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
GOODMAN, N. (1955): Fact, Fiction and Forecast, Cambridge, Harvard University Press.
GORDON, P. (2012): “Forum: Kuhn’s Structure at Fifty. Introduction”, Modern Intellectual History,vol. 9, nº 1, pp. 73-76.
GUNNELL, J. (2009): “Ideology and the Philosophy of Science: an American Misunderstanding”, Journal of Political Ideologies,pp. 317-337.
GUTTING, G. (1980): Paradigms and Revolutions: Applications and Appraisals of Thomas Kuhn’s Philosophy of Science,South Bend, Notre Dame University Press.
HACKING, I. (1992): “The Self-Vindication of the Laboratory Sciences”, en A. Pickering (ed.): Science as Practice and Culture,pp. 29-64.
HACOHEN, M. (2000): Karl Popper: The Formative Years, 1902-1945,Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
HARRINGTON, A. (1999): Reenchanted Science: Holism in German Science from Wilhelm II to Hitler,Princeton, Princeton University Press.
HASKELL, T. (1984): “Professionalism versus Capitalism: R.H. Tawney, Emile Durkheim, and C.S. Peirce on the Disinterestedness of Professional Communities”, en T. Haskell (ed.): The Authority of Experts,Bloomington, Indiana University Press, pp. 180-225.
HOYNINGEN-HUENE, P. (1993): Reconstructing Scientific Revolutions, Chicago, University of Chicago Press.
IINTERACADEMY PANEL (2006): “Statement on the Teaching of Evolution”. Disponible en: http://www.interacademies.net/10878/13901.aspx
ISSAC, J. (2011): Working Knowledge: Making the Human Sciences from Parsons to Kuhn, Cambridge, Harvard University Press.
KADVANY, J. (2001): Imre Lakatos and the Guises of Reason, Durham, Duke University Press.
KUHN, T. (1957): The Copernican Revolution.Chicago, University of Chicago Press.
KUHN, T. (1970): The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Chicago, University of Chicago Press.
KUHN, T. (1977): The Essential Tension,Chicago, University of Chicago Press.
KUHN, T. (2000): The Road Since Structure, Chicago, University of Chicago Press.
LAKATOS, I. Y MUSGRAVE A. (1970): Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
MACINTYRE, A. (1981): After Virtue, South Bend, University of Notre Dame Press.
MAYORAL, J. V. (2012): “Five Decades of Structure: A Retrospective View”, Theoria, vol. 75, pp. 261-80.
MIROWSKI, P. (1989): More Heat than Light, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
POPPER, K. (1972): Objective Knowledge,Oxford, Oxford University Press.
POPPER, K. (1981): “The Rationality of Scientific Revolutions”, en I. Hacking (ed.):
Scientific Revolutions,Oxford, Oxford University Press, pp. 80-106.
PROCTOR, R. (1991): Value-Free Science?,Cambridge, Harvard University Press.
PROCTOR, R. (2000): The Nazi War on Cancer, Princeton, Princeton University Press.
PUTNAM, H. (1978): Meaning and the Moral Sciences,Londres, Routledge.
REISCH, G. (2005): How the Cold War Transformed the Philosophy of Science, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
RORTY, R. (1979): Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Princeton, Princeton University Press.
SCHAEFER, W. (1984): Finalization in Science,Dordrecht, Reidel.
SHAPIN, S. (2005): “Hyperprofessionalism and the Crisis of Readership in the History of Science”, Isis,vol. 96, pp. 238-243.
STANFORD, P. K. (2006): Exceeding Our Grasp, Oxford, Oxford University Press.
WIENER, N. (1950): The Human Use of Human Beings,Boston, Houghton Mifflin.
WILL, F. (1988): Beyond Deduction: Ampliative Aspects of Philosophical Reflection, Londres, Routledge.
WILSON, E. O. (2007): The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth,Nueva York, W.W. Norton.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2024 CC Attribution 4.0
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
All CTS's issues and academic articles are under a CC-BY license.
Since 2007, CTS has provided open and free access to all its contents, including the complete archive of its quarterly edition and the different products presented in its electronic platform. This decision is based on the belief that offering free access to published materials helps to build a greater and better exchange of knowledge.
In turn, for the quarterly edition, CTS allows institutional and thematic repositories, as well as personal web pages, to self-archive articles in their post-print or editorial version, immediately after the publication of the final version of each issue and under the condition that a link to the original source will be incorporated into the self-archive.
