Focusing on Thomas Kuhn’s paradigm theory, I explain the discontinuity of scientific progress and the concept of incomparability of paradigms. I also criticize Kuhn’s views and discuss the possibility of comparison between paradigms and scientific progress.
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, which contains Thomas Kuhn’s paradigmatic propositions, was published in 1962 and sparked a “Kuhn revolution” upon its publication. His theory of scientific development and change, encapsulated in a paradigm, has become one of the most influential ideas in modern thought, and has been widely recognized in the philosophy of science, natural sciences, and social sciences. In this blog post, I will discuss Kuhn’s paradigmatic claims, and in particular his notion of “incommensurability by the same standard,” which states that paradigms are not comparable to each other. At the same time, I’ll identify some of the limitations of Kuhn’s paradigm, and ultimately consider whether paradigms are a concept that can be advanced.
Before we get into the discussion of paradigms, it’s important to review Thomas Kuhn’s theory and what a paradigm is. A paradigm, a key concept in this book, is originally defined as a theoretical framework or set of concepts that governs the behavior and thinking of people in an era. However, Thomas Kuhn used the term paradigm to refer to a set of concepts, laws, values, knowledge, habits, etc. that are shared by an entire society of scientists. Thomas Kuhn believed that change and development in science is discontinuous or revolutionary rather than development-by-accumulation. According to him, “a scientific revolution is a phenomenon that occurs when the normal science is disrupted by a crisis caused by the frequent appearance of serious anomalies, and the result is a new normal science.”
This view of Thomas Kuhn’s was a direct refutation of the dominant theories of the early 1900s, namely “logical positivism” or “logical empiricism”. According to the logical empiricist view, which explains the development of science based on theory-neutral observation and logical reasoning, scientific knowledge grows continuously and cumulatively throughout history. Thomas Kuhn, on the other hand, uses the concepts of “normal science” and “scientific revolutions” to explain changes and developments in science. In contrast to the traditional logical empiricist view, Kuhn sees scientific change as non-continuous and non-accumulative. As Kuhn explains, if scientific change is revolutionary and discontinuous, then a period of stability is necessary before the revolution occurs. Kuhn defines this period as the period of normal science. When normal science is challenged by new anomalous discoveries and fails spectacularly, the old paradigm is replaced by a new one, which is called a scientific revolution.
According to Thomas Kuhn’s logic, the new paradigm appears to be more advanced and in the right direction than the old one. Examples include the shift from the Ptolemaic geocentric worldview to Copernican heliocentric astronomy, the birth of Lavoisier’s oxygen theory of combustion, and the crisis in classical physics at the end of the 19th century that led to the theory of relativity. In these cases, the emergence of a new paradigm seems to have solved the problems of the old paradigm, but is the new paradigm more advanced than the old one? Thomas Kuhn answers this question as follows.
“Competing paradigms are incommensurable by the same standard: they cannot be compared on a logical basis. To accept one paradigm is to believe in the whole system, including its concepts, laws, and assumptions, which cannot be compared or evaluated in isolation.”
To summarize, Thomas Kuhn’s position is that the new paradigm is an incommensurable baseline against which the old paradigm cannot be compared, and therefore the new paradigm is not an improvement. He explains that a paradigm shift is a matter of choice, like a gestalt switch or a religious conversion, and is not a matter of preference.
According to Thomas Kuhn, the development of each paradigm is only possible within the world of that paradigm, and there is no concept of progression or development to a new paradigm. This is because each paradigm uses a different vocabulary, which prevents comparison. Thomas Kuhn’s view is logically sound, as described above. However, I would like to raise the following criticisms. First and foremost, it’s easy to fall into relativism if you support Thomas Kuhn’s view. In other words, if competing paradigms are so incompatible that it becomes impossible to compare them with each other, then all that has been done in the name of science, which has been driven by “comparison with existing theories,” becomes meaningless. If the comparison between the dominant paradigm and the new paradigm is not possible, then the question arises as to where the incentive for the new paradigm to emerge comes from. In addition, if all phenomena are interpreted through the framework of a paradigm, as in the case of Thomas Kuhn, the positivist approach of systematically analyzing natural phenomena and using direct experience and observation, such as logical positivism, becomes meaningless, and science can only exist as a relative and subjective phenomenon.
I believe that paradigms gradually evolve through the process of discarding the old paradigm and transitioning to a new one. For example, compare Copernicus’ geocentric theory with Ptolemy’s epicycles. Ptolemy’s heliocentric worldview was refuted by the advent of Kepler’s laws and Copernicus’ geocentric theory and could no longer explain planetary motion. In other words, a new paradigm emerges and the old paradigm is discarded. In his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn uses this example to explain the concept of paradigms to his readers. However, I don’t see this as the emergence of a new paradigm that is different and incomparable (in Kuhn’s view) to the old one. The old paradigm, Ptolemy’s heliocentrism, could not adequately explain the phases of Venus and the precession of the stars at the time. Ptolemaic epicycles, which viewed all planetary motions as centered on the Earth, were “disproven” to be incorrect by Venus’ phase changes and precession, and therefore no longer had any relevance as a theory of planetary motion. Of course, in Thomas Kuhn’s view, even in this case, the two theories are not comparable because they are independent, relative, and have different language systems, values, etc. However, there is absolutely one real physical phenomenon, and the idea that different systems of describing it are incomparable is a nihilism that hinders the progress of science. Clearly, Copernicus’s theory of geodynamics is less likely to be disproved than Ptolemy’s theory of celestial motion, and is closer to the truth. Thus, contrary to Thomas Kuhn’s view, I do not believe that paradigms are incommensurable by the same standard of incommensurability. I believe that there must be connections between paradigms, and that disprovability can be used to distinguish between superior and more advanced paradigms.
In the end, these differences are not a matter of right or wrong, but of fundamental philosophical worldviews. This view is somewhat consistent with that of Karl Popper, an Austrian philosopher of science. In a paper by Changsung Hong on his argument, there is the following passage.
“Karl Popper calls himself a believer in commonsense realism. He believes in the existence of the objective world in a simple way. For him, evidence that refutes a theory has the power to disprove that theory in a single blow, as an objectively true, real fact.”
According to the above view, Karl Popper recognizes science as absolute truth and believes in the reality of the objective world. This is different from Thomas Kuhn’s concept of a relative paradigmatic worldview. I also support his theory of disprovability and the absoluteness of science.
Unlike me, Thomas Kuhn ultimately believes that the idea that scientists can get closer to the truth through paradigm shifts is meaningless. He uses Darwin’s theory of evolution as an example. He points out that all the popular theories of evolution in the pre-Darwinian era were goal-oriented processes, but after Darwin’s proposal that life started from a primordial beginning without any goal, the idea became contradictory. Thomas Kuhn asks himself, “What can evolution, development, and progress mean in the absence of a specific goal?” But this attitude is not correct. It’s a deeply nihilistic position, and it comes from interpreting all natural phenomena and scientific activity through the lens of a paradigm. While there may be differences between what he thinks is “truth” and what I think is “truth,” evolution absolutely exists as a natural phenomenon, and our direct experience and observation of it provides us with a more realistic explanation of the evolution of life. For example, the discovery of missing links between fossils and fossilized organisms is a good example of this. If we see these absolute facts as truth, then we are getting closer and closer to the truth. It’s a matter of how we view access to “truth.” Also, the lack of purpose in evolution does not mean that everything related to evolution is meaningless. There is also the possibility that continued exploration could lead to more environmentally and economically beneficial directions for humans, which we can call social and scientific progress.
In this article, we have introduced Thomas Kuhn’s paradigm concept and its core content, incommensurability, and criticized the blind spots in his argument. I have criticized Kuhn’s relativistic position by introducing my own logic and Karl Popper’s concepts. The paradigm of Thomas Kuhn is still supported by an overwhelming majority. However, paradoxically, there is no absolute truth in Thomas Kuhn’s position, so I wonder if we can criticize it.
