Thomas Kuhn argued that science advances through paradigm shifts, or scientific revolutions, but there are questions about whether the results and methods of normal science are valid in a new paradigm. This article examines the validity of Kuhn’s argument by comparing it to disprovationalism.
Before Thomas Kuhn, people thought that science progressed by accumulating knowledge by making small advances on past research, as exemplified by Isaac Newton’s famous statement that he was able to see far by standing on the shoulders of giants. However, Kuhn argued that science did not always progress by accumulating small discoveries from previous research. He thought that science progressed by repeated paradigm shifts, or scientific revolutions. In particular, he argued that the results and methods obtained during the development of normal science, which is based on paradigms, make a significant contribution to scientific progress. However, there are doubts that science has progressed through scientific revolutions and the development of normal science as Kuhn argued. This article will explain paradigms and normal science, then raise questions about the relationship between normal science and scientific progress, and discuss why such questions are fatal by comparing the process of scientific revolution to antinomianism.
A paradigm initially refers to the theories espoused by different schools of thought about a problem. In the early stages of scientific development, paradigms from different schools of thought compete and eventually converge into a single, universally accepted paradigm. These shifts in the dominant paradigm are known as scientific revolutions, and Kuhn believed that science evolved through iterations of these revolutions. A paradigm is not something specific that provides the answer to every problem. It is initially posited as a theory to explain a small set of problems, but it gradually gains traction and becomes accepted by different schools of thought as it explains many other problems. These problems include not only previously recognized problems, but also problems posed by the paradigm.
Normal science refers to research based on these dominant paradigms. Normal science assumes the underlying paradigm to be orthodox and attempts to raise, predict, and explain various problematic situations based on it. The problems that normal science is interested in can be categorized into three main categories. The first is the problem that the paradigm initially tries to explain: interpreting and explaining the results of simple measurements and experiments. The second are the problems that can be raised by the paradigm, which refine the paradigm by comparing the results predicted by the paradigm. The third are the problems that the paradigm is supposed to solve, which become more and more specific and clear as we use the paradigm to solve them.
In his book, Kuhn emphasizes that a paradigm is not an absolute truth, but rather a guide for further research. He sees paradigms as determining the purpose and methods of research and helping to find meaning in the results. It’s like digging for hidden treasure in the ground, defining a specific scope and determining the value of what you find. So Kuhn believes that even if the paradigm is wrong, the normal science built on it has contributed to the progress of science. Even if they didn’t find treasure, they did find some minerals, or at least learned how to dig.
However, it is questionable whether a failed normal science can actually help shape the next paradigm and contribute to scientific progress beyond its value as one of the failures. The observations, tools, and experimental methods acquired through the development of normal science are based on paradigms. If the existing paradigm is disproved and the underlying paradigm is overturned, normal science will collapse, but can the observations, experimental methods, and tools acquired during its development be utilized without problems in the future? Can the results of research that starts from a false premise and the methods acquired along the way always be correct? We don’t know if the techniques we learn from digging the wrong hole will be appropriate for digging another hole. We can’t even be sure that the technology is right, and we can’t be sure that the minerals from that dig are valuable. These questions are fatal to the birth of a new paradigm. To understand why questioning the results of the previous orthodox science is a fatal problem for the birth of a new paradigm, let’s connect the process of scientific revolutions to the concept of disprovism.
Disproofism is the view that propositions that have withstood multiple attempts to disprove them are better propositions than those that have not. A proposition should be more disprovable, but not simultaneously disproved. If an existing proposition is disproven, a new proposition will emerge and be tested to withstand the disproofs that the old proposition passed and the disproofs that it failed. If the new proposition withstands all the resulting disproofs, it is recognized as a better proposition than the old one. Disprovationalism believes that accepted propositions are not the truth, but rather a process of progress toward the truth. Every proposition is only better than the last, not an irrefutable truth, so unlike inductivism, we don’t have to worry about whether a proposition is absolutely true. However, disprovationalism has several inherent problems. Chief among them is the complexity of the situation. When the outcome of an experiment is different from the outcome predicted by a proposition, can we say that the proposition is wrong? The problem could be in the theory used to make the observations, or it could be in the assumptions of the experiment. The fact that the results of an experiment differ from the predicted results does not tell us that the proposition we are trying to disprove is wrong.
Kuhn’s paradigm is very similar to disprovationalism. It’s a process in which different schools of thought first develop different paradigms and then converge on a dominant one. A paradigm that initially answers a few problems must withstand the disproof of many other problems in order to become the dominant paradigm. The paradigms that fail to withstand disproof disappear, and the paradigms that survive survive. As a result, the paradigms of different schools of thought disappear, leaving only one dominant paradigm that is recognized by many schools of thought. This is similar to disprovationalism, where propositions that withstand disproof survive and those that are disproved disappear. The process by which new paradigms emerge that can better explain phenomena when an existing paradigm is disproved is also similar to the process by which new propositions emerge in counterfactualism. Moreover, the idea that paradigms are not absolute truths is consistent with the idea that there are better propositions, but no truth propositions.
From this perspective, the process of the Scientific Revolution suffers from the same limitations as disprovism. The limitation of disprovism is that in complex situations, there is no way to know what is wrong when results do not match expectations. We don’t know if it’s a problem with the proposition we’re trying to disprove, a problem with the observation method, or a problem with other auxiliary theories. This is why using methods from established science is a fatal problem for disproving new paradigms. The methods and the observations obtained using those methods cannot be guaranteed to be true, as mentioned above. The disproved paradigm is replaced by a new paradigm, but it is hard to believe that the methods learned in the course of the development of normal science based on the disproved paradigm can be utilized under the new paradigm. Furthermore, disprovals in complex situations cannot be certain that the propositions they seek to disprove are wrong. In other words, in many cases, the results of a disproof of a new paradigm are not certain. This is because we don’t know whether the problem is due to the observational methods of the old normal science or the new paradigm. In the end, Kuhn’s theory of how science develops may not be valid from the time a new paradigm is born.
We examined Thomas Kuhn’s argument about how science develops, focusing on its implications for the development of normal science, and considered the validity of Kuhn’s argument by comparing the process of scientific revolutions to anti-evidence. As a result, Kuhn’s argument has a contradiction: disproved paradigms are replaced by new paradigms, but what is learned from the development of normal science based on disproved paradigms can be utilized beyond the failures. However, in contrast to the traditional view that scientific progress is incremental, the idea that scientific progress is revolutionary is a very valuable attempt to provide a new way of looking at the history of science.
