Thomas Kuhn didn’t use the word “revolutions” for convenience’s sake or as a flamboyant piece of rhetoric. Instead, he believed that there are many literal parallels between political revolutions and what has historically happened in science. This essay explores whether all those parallels are justified, and what they tell us about the nature and practice of science.
“I say I’m gonna pwove something that cannot be pwoved, I appwy for gwant money, and then I spend it on wiquor and bwoads.”
— Barry Kripke (Kripke classed himself as a “stwing pwagmatist”.)
Thomas Kuhn used the word “revolutions”. This meant that many commentators interpreted his words through an exclusively political lens. Kuhn himself noted this, and once said:
“I get a lot of letters saying, ‘I’ve just read your book and it’s transformed my life. I’m trying to start a revolution. Please help me,’ and accompanied by a book-length manuscript.”
Those activists and others who turned to Kuhn for political inspiration had really got the wrong end of the stick. Kuhn wasn’t either for or against revolution in politics — at least not in his writings. And when it came to science, he simply noted that such things had occurred, and explained how and why they did so. Thus, Kuhn’s work was essentially a blend of the sociology of science, the history of science, and the philosophy of science. (It wouldn’t be wise to overstress the descriptive nature of Kuhn’s work.)
Kuhn on Paradigms and Paradigm Change
Most scientists don’t use the word “paradigm” in a strictly scientific context. Indeed, they may not even be aware of Thomas Kuhn’s ideas on this subject (which date back to 1962). Still, a distinction between a word and a concept can be made here. Thus, are many scientists aware of the concept of paradigm change even if they don’t use the words “paradigm change”? Probably not. That’s because baked into Kuhn’s notion of paradigm change is the parallel notion of incommensurability, which is certainly something most scientists won’t accept. On the other hand, many scientists will accept the notions of radical change, revolutionary theories, novel theories, etc. Yet none of these examples will be wide-ranging enough to satisfy a Kuhnian. That is because, again, radical change — and even revolutionary change — needn’t also incorporate Kuhn’s notion of incommensurability. It is that notion which is truly radical. (Whether or not incommensurability is the correct way of looking at these things is, of course, another matter.)
Kuhn on Scientific Institutions
Science requires institutions, just as political practice requires institutions. According to Kuhn, it’s the power of institutions which forms the focus of both scientific and political revolutions. Kuhn noted that
“[p]olitical revolutions aim to change political institutions in ways that those institutions themselves prohibit”.
Some readers may note that many historical revolutions have attempted to destroy existing institutions, rather than change them. Kuhn himself acknowledged that the “success [of revolutions] therefore necessitates the partial relinquishment of one set of institutions in favour of another”. Yet Kuhn moved further away from the notion of changing existing institutions by saying that after such a revolution “society is not fully governed by institutions at all”. This means that there’s a little bit of unclarity here as regards change or destruction.
So what happens when a violent revolution isn’t forthcoming?
Then the trick is to change the existing institutions instead. Kuhn noted that such institutions attempt to “prohibit” all change. This too isn’t necessarily the case, and it will depend on what kind of change is being advocated. Some people inside existing institutions may also be sympathetic to the change. Alternatively, new members of the existing institutions may be the primary adherents of change.
Those within the existing institutions are in a (to use Kuhn’s words) “different world” to those on the outside. That’s if the revolutionaries haven’t already embedded themselves within the institutions, and even (à la Gramsci) “taken them over”.
Here I’m talking about politics, not science.
So does all that apply to science too?
According to Kuhn, it does. He wrote:
“That professionalisation leads, on the one hand, to an immense restriction of the scientist’s vision and to a considerable resistance to paradigm change. The scientist has become increasingly rigid.”
Does this mean that if conservatism in science is a bad thing, then it must be a bad thing in politics too? Does the comparison really cross over?
Perhaps this is too simplistic when it comes to science.
There seems to be an assumption that all professional and/or institutional scientists are completely unaware of what’s going on outside. Yet it’s a fact that many institutional (or professional) scientists are aware of the work of amateur scientists, and even of “revolutionary scientists”. That said, it can’t be denied that many scientists are careerists, just as many people who work for Amnesty International, the Conservative Party, Oxfam, etc. are careerists.
Dealing With Paradigm Change
One way in which “conservative” scientists can deny the paradigm change that’s happening beneath their feet is not to “treat anomalies as counter-instances”. (Counter-instances to the existing paradigm.) Kuhn cited an example of such an anomaly. He stated that “the problem of ether drag did for those who accepted Maxwell’s theory”.
There’s another related way in which scientists can deal with paradigm change. As the philosopher John Cottingham puts it:
“[T]heories are seldom discarded, even in the face of seemingly striking anomalies in the observational data.”
This is a case of “[t]aking issue with Popper”. Thus, “the ruling assumptions and standards on inquiry associated with dominant scientific theory” can accommodate such anomalies. Things change, however, “when the ruling paradigm runs into crisis, and only when some alternative paradigm is available”. Here Kuhn incorporated another favourite word of political revolutionaries — “crisis”. (Even when there isn’t a crisis, it pays dividends for revolutionaries to claim that there is one.)
Cottingham’s words above also suggest that if there isn’t an alternative paradigm, then a crisis may well lead nowhere… or simply result in scientists sticking mindlessly to the existing paradigm.
What are revolutionary scientists up against?
Kuhn argued that it’s primarily a “particular scientific community”. In that community “men who learned the bases of their belief from the same concrete models”. As a result of this, members of this community “will seldom evoke overt disagreement over fundamentals”. This is also the case because the “research is based on shared paradigms [which include] the same rules and standards for scientific practice”.
In a certain sense, Kuhn was stating the obvious. All communities must share at least some things in order to constitute a community in the first place. This means that revolutionaries also share much. For example, Marxist revolutionaries will have learned the bases of their belief from the same concrete sources. What’s more, even revolutionary scientists, if tackling the same problem, may well share much. Yet even within these communities, there’ll be individuals who do disagree about some fundamentals.
It isn’t necessarily the case that Kuhn’s notions of paradigm, scientific revolution, incommensurability, etc. need to be evoked in all cases of rebellion from within a given community. Had this point been put to him, Kuhn might well have agreed. So it may ultimately depend on concrete cases and particular scientists. Yet, in at least some cases, rebellion from within simply wouldn’t work. Or, at the least, rebellion from within wouldn’t even make sense if the rebellion was of such magnitude that it wouldn’t work without it challenging the entire existing paradigm.
Ultimately, then, all this may well depend on the specific examples that Kuhn himself gave.
Kuhn on the Problems Within Normal Science
At one point Kuhn wrote that the “traditional pursuit prepares the way for its own change”. If that’s the case, then why the need for a scientific revolution at all? If the change is organic (the way that Kuhn expressed this makes it seem that way), then that goes against the everyday notion of a revolution.
On a related theme. When it comes to science, the revolutionary situation is largely brought about by what Kuhn called “problems”. In detail:
“[S]cientific revolutions are inaugurated by a growing sense, again often restricted to a narrow subdivision of the scientific community, that an existing paradigm has ceased to function adequately in the explorations of an aspect of nature to which the paradigm itself had previously led the way.”
In terms of Kuhns twin notions of paradigms and incommensurability, one may wonder how an “existing paradigm” can have “led the way” to a new revolutionary paradigm if both paradigms are mutually incommensurable. Surely two Kuhnian paradigms have almost nothing in common. So how can an existing paradigm lead to a new revolutionary paradigm?
Thus, the need for a literal revolution?
That’s what Kuhn at least believed. He put it this way:
“In both political and scientific development the sense of malfunction that can lead to crisis is prerequisite to revolution.”
Of course, the melodramatic word “crisis” in the above needs to be both explained and defended.
Marxist theory may help here.
In Marxist theory, we find the notion of the “contradictions” which are embedded in either a particular society or in a particular theory. On a sympathetic reading, then, traditional science may prepare the way for its own change because it contains contradictions. In simple terms, it’s the existing science which contains the contradictions. Therefore that science (with its contradictions) leads the way to its own change — even to radical (if not revolutionary) change. Yet even on this reading the whole process still seems to be somewhat organic. In other words, scientists within a community can deal with the contradictions within their own theories or practices. Consequently, there may be no need for revolutionary scientists on the outside to come to their rescue.
Kuhn on Paradigms and Revolution
According to Kuhn, during the course of a revolution (i.e., rather than after), existing institutions “attenuate the role of paradigms”. As a result of this, “political recourse fails”. This is where paradigms and incommensurability really enter the picture. This is how Kuhn summed up the situation:
“Because they differ about the institutional matrix within which political change is said to be achieved and evaluated, because they acknowledge no supra-institutional framework for the adjudication of revolutionary difference, the parties to a revolutionary conflict must finally resort to the techniques of mass persuasion, often including force.”
This is a radical and unsettling analysis. It may well be true in the case of political revolutions. However, has it also been the case in science? In the former case, for example, Marxist and Nazi revolutionaries have historically differed about the institutional matrix within which political change is said to be achieved and evaluated. In terms of Marxist and Nazi theory, again, everything and anything is analysed through a Marxist or Nazi theoretical lens (i.e., from opera to the nature of the family). Thus, how can any given subject (or situation) be evaluated according to two radically different standpoints? This means that, at its extreme, there’s no debate at all to be had with anyone outside the revolutionary tribe. The only thing left is the gaining of power.
Kuhn himself stressed this no-debate situation when he said that
“[w]hen paradigms enter, as they must, into a debate about paradigm choice, their role is necessarily circular”.
In other words, “[e]ach group uses its own paradigm to argue in that paradigm’s defence”. Again, in these situations, there’s no room for any debate at all with anyone outside the revolutionary tribe. Indeed, debate is almost literally pointless. (Many readers will have noticed that it’s very hard to debate with radical or fundamentalist Marxists or Nazis because they belong to “different worlds”.)
Again, all this seems true when it comes to politics, but not so true when it comes to science.
Now let’s bring Thomas Kuhn up to date, without actually altering his central ideas.
Smolin and Woit on String Theory as Normal Science
If anything, the following words of Lee Smolin and Peter Woit are more radical than Kuhn’s own. The odd thing here, however, is that they’re referring to the existing paradigm that is string theory. (It can be argued that string theory is a theoretical framework, rather than a full-blown paradigm.) Why is that odd? It’s odd because, unlike the normal science examples offered by Kuhn, here we have a speculative and non-empirical set of theories which have established a hegemony within universities and academia… at least they had when Smolin and Woit were writing about this subject.
Perhaps it was precisely the speculative and non-empirical nature of string theory that allowed — and enabled — it to establish its hegemony, and then to sustain that hegemony for over three decades. After all, if in string theory there really is (to quote Smolin) “no more reliance on experiment”, then what on earth could have stopped its almost-total dominance of theoretical physics?
In tune with Kuhn, and in his blog post ‘Response to Criticism’, Smolin also wrote the following:
“To discuss some sociological issues in contemporary academic science which I argue are slowing the progress of science, and to propose solutions to them.”
What Kuhn wrote way back in 1962 was also replicated be Peter Woit in 2006. Woit claimed that string theory’s popularity is partly (or largely?) a result of the financial and political nature of academia. In addition, this hegemony of string theory is also down to the crazy and frantic academic competition for scarce resources. The following passage is Woit on string theory:
“In 2004 I was looking at nearly twenty years of domination of fundamental theory by a speculative idea that to me had never looked promising and by then was clearly a failure. 20 years later this story has become highly disturbing. The refusal to admit failure and move on has to a large degree killed off the field as a serious science.”
Woit then offers us more on the sociology of string theory:
“40 years of training generations of students in a failed research program has taken its toll on the subject.”
Mathematical physicist Roger Penrose too (in his book The Road to Reality) had something similar to say on this subject when he wrote:
“The often frantic competitiveness that this ease of communication engenders leads to bandwagon effects, where researchers fear to be left behind if they do not join in.”
Like other hegemonies, those in control of string theory’s research programs (or those who benefit from them) “will never admit what has happened, no matter how bad it gets”. In addition, although string theory is speculative, it’s been heavily funded, and it has sustained countless careers over the last three decades or more.
No comments:
Post a Comment