The Structure Of Scientific Revolutions
Because of departmental peculiarities I haven't taught philosophy of science in something like ten years, so it's been basically that long since I thought much about Kuhn or cracked open my copy of SSR... You know, as much as we all punch it around anymore, that really is a damn interesting, impressive, cool, readable, exciting book. I'd really forgotten how much fun it is to read. Though, embarrassingly, I really am pretty ignorant of the secondary literature. I really ought to fix that in my copious spare time.
[Good news! My first duck-rabbit came out almost perfect! I still got it...]
[Good news! My first duck-rabbit came out almost perfect! I still got it...]
posted by Winston Smith at
10:17 PM
4 Comments:
A few weeks ago we did a whole section on Kuhn's demarcation criteria in my philsci class, but it was constantly derailed by the undergrads. Damn cross-listed classes!!
BTW..revolutionary science is totally science.
I'm a bit concerned about Kuhn as the determinant literature in philosophy of science. Sure he's fine as philosophy about science (which is as much anthropology as it is philosophy.) But he's no Karl Popper. That's *real* philosophy of science. As in: Einstein used his ideas as a foundation when he overthrew classical physics. Kuhn is fine as far as he goes, and I'm sure more work has been done along those lines since I read him as an undergraduate back in the 1980s.
But it's worth discussing the foundational stuff too.
CS,
Lol yeah, cross-listed classes are the bane of the grad student...
PM,
Agreed. I think SSR is exciting and approachable...but probably not all that *right.* Which is kinda why I was so pleasantly surprised when I actually cracked it open again--I have a generally negative opinion of it...and I'd forgotten how gripping and interesting it is.
Yeah, Popper is way better, for all his errors. Even after I came to believe in abduction, hence to reject the *conjectures* part of the *conjectures and refutations* view, I still have a high opinion of the guy.
Kuhn also makes a nice segue between (a) Positivism and Popper and (b) more contemporary views--like, e.g., the trainwrecks of the sociology of "knowledge" and feminist philosophy of science.
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