This article explores the development of science by focusing on Thomas Kuhn’s paradigm theory. It questions whether science seeks absolute truth or merely phenomena explained by new perspectives, and reconsiders the nature and goals of scientific inquiry.
As I read about the philosophy of science, I became aware of the debates about how science accumulates knowledge and progresses. Through my readings, I explored different positions in the philosophy of science, such as inductivism and disprovism, rationalism and relativism. In particular, I learned that the term “paradigm,” introduced in Thomas Samuel Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, has advanced our understanding of the structure of science and has become so widely recognized that it is used in many fields outside of science. Kuhn’s theory of paradigms has expanded beyond simply explaining the development of science to become a tool for explaining shifts in thinking and innovations in various fields. As such, paradigms have gone beyond academic structures to have a profound impact on people’s perceptions and ways of thinking.
But questions about scientific progress and truth remain. If science is simply a process of presenting new perspectives, can we pursue absolute truth? The paradigm explains how scientific progress occurs: knowledge is accumulated, and a scientific revolution occurs when a new normal science is established through a series of crises, but it does not explain how progress is directed toward the pursuit of absolute truth. It provides a new way of looking at the world, a new way of explaining a phenomenon, but it does not approach absolute truth. I’ve always thought of science as the pursuit of absolute truth, so while I agree with Kuhn’s theory, I find it hard to disagree with some parts of it. In this blog post, I’d like to rethink the idea of truth and discuss what the purpose of science is.
Let’s think about truth. What is truth? The concept of truth depends on how you define it: philosophical truth, religious truth, mathematical truth, etc. Truth can also be referred to as an objective fact, and how it is accepted in science is also important. Let’s take a look at what is considered truth in science. It is true that the Earth revolves around the Sun once every 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, and 46 seconds. It is also true that all matter is made up of atoms. The relativistic position puts it this way. It is only since Nicolaus Copernicus’ position has been accepted that we recognize as true that the earth revolves around the sun. Before that, we accepted the heliocentric theory as true, not the geocentric theory. It is only since the acceptance of atomism that we recognize as truth that all matter is made of atoms.
In other words, relativists argue that truth is determined by the position we adopt and the lens through which we view phenomena. Kuhn called these positions and perspectives “paradigms”. According to this argument, truth is an imperfect thing that depends on how we look at things, not an absolute thing. There is no absolute truth that pervades the entire universe and therefore cannot be found. However, the question remains whether this relativistic view fully explains the nature of science. Because while relativism may explain the context of scientific discoveries, it doesn’t dismiss the idea that there are immutable facts behind them.
My view is different. Before we accepted Nicolaus Copernicus’ position, the earth revolved around the sun, and before we accepted atomism, all matter was made of atoms. Oxygen was used for breathing and participated in chemical reactions long before we recognized its existence. In other words, its essence was there before we could explain any phenomenon. We’ve just been slow to notice it. So what can we say about the things we don’t notice? Can we say that truths about unnoticed things exist? My position is that we can say they exist.
This raises an important philosophical question. We accumulate knowledge through observation, but our observations may not reveal the whole of nature. A prime example of an as-yet-undiscovered truth is the study of what drives the rate of expansion of the universe. Dark matter is currently the leading candidate for this expansion. It’s hard to see and hasn’t been proven with certainty, so it’s still a hypothesis, albeit a strong one. If it is observed and proven to be true, the hypothesis will later be accepted as truth. However, if this hypothesis is proven false, another hypothesis will arise, and research will continue to prove it.
In science, truth is expanded incrementally in this way. We may never fully arrive at the truth, but we are getting closer and closer to it through persistent inquiry. The many paradigm shifts that occur along the way are not simply a change of perspective, but a process by which we arrive at absolute truth. Therefore, I believe that a paradigm shift is not simply the acceptance of a new theory, but a tool by which the theory gradually leads us to the truth.
In this way, it is my contention that there is an absolute truth behind the existence of any object or phenomenon, whether we know it or not. Such truths are called scientific truths, and the position that explains these absolute scientific truths should be thought of as a paradigm, which is different from Kuhn’s position that a paradigm does not develop in a certain direction, but merely withstands counterevidence and overcomes crises. I think a paradigm will and should move in the direction of a perfect explanation of scientific truth. The pursuit of scientific truth is the purpose of science and the meaning of scientific activity.
