The Structure of Science?

The Structure of Science?

The main philosophical problems of modern society are intimately associated with Tom and Jane’s enchantment with Science. Normal science is, for too many, an enchanted idol that is perceived as the savior of humanity. No matter what dastardly things humans may do, Science will save us.

Science—normal science—as Thomas Kuhn labels it in “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” moves forward in a “successive transition from one paradigm to another”. A paradigm defines the theory, rules and standards of practice. “In the absence of a paradigm or some candidate for paradigm, all of the facts that could possible pertain to the development of a given science are likely to seem equally relevant.”

The Newtonian scientific paradigm was a mathematical, quantified, pattern capable of reducing reality to an atomic level. It’s ideal, if there was one, was man as a machine or more likely a cog in a machine. In such a science we lose the individual man and woman. Rousseau was offering something entirely different. It was holistic and non-reducible. It was a gestalt that included man as neutral manipulator of scientific experiments but also as a subject with values who was a totally thinking, feeling, free agent.

“Rousseau showed that morality had to be instrumented, by man according to an ideal formulated by him; the science of man could only have meaning as an active ideal-type of science.” Newtonian paradigms left no room for such and ideal. It had no room for a holistic woman or man. The solution proposed by Rousseau was to make humanity first and science second; science was to be the servant of wo/man rather than wo/man as the servant of science.

The paradigm of Newtonianism turned out to be a tougher nut than the Enlightenment could crack. Such individuals as Darwin and Spencer appeared on the scene and quickly humanity was sequestered again into the background by Science. Dewey’s long life time proved insufficient to the challenge and the reason why: “pragmatism contained no moral criteria by means of which a man-based value science could be instrumented.”

Marx recognized the problem inherent in scientism and shifted ground from Rousseau’s ideal-type to the possible-type. Marx said that we should do what is possible and possible in our time. Marx advocated the victory of the laboring class.

“What are the main problems of modern society; how can man’s situation in the world be improved?” Marx determined that the Newtonian paradigm was morally unedifying; the social problem was the alienation of man. But with Marx the ideal vision of the Enlightenment was swallowed up in the Revolution. The ideal of a full and free liberation of the human potential was destroyed in the Revolution.

And therein lay the rub. What is a paradigm of normal science as Kuhn so succinctly wrote about and which, as a concept, was unrecognized in Kuhntonion form a century ago, but was nevertheless, even then, the heart of normal science.

Kuhn says that practitioners of normal science have: a paradigm that makes a science normal when most if not all members agree upon a theory as being true. When this agreement breaks down then a new paradigm is agreed upon. The paradigm defines a map for action. The thing that separates a paradigm from some kind of, green light and red light group agreement about crossing the street is that there is more careful control, calculation, instrumentation, and a greater willingness to place before the world a conjecture to be evaluated as to its truth. A paradigm defines the theory, rules, and standards of practice.

It seems that almost all domains of knowledge wish to emulate Science. Science for most people is technology and if questioned we would probably find that science means physics. We have placed Science on a very high pedestal because technology has been so successful. Every domain of knowledge wishes to be as good as Science.

[b]I suspect that the way to judge how well a domain of knowledge is like science is to discover if it does or does not have a paradigm. Like Kuhn notes in his book that without a paradigm any knowledge is as good as any other. Paradigm converts chaos into system.

Many of the ideas and quotes in this OP are derived from Ernest Becker’s book “Beyond Alienation”. Me and Ernest agree that the “main philosophical problem for modern society” is that we need a paradigm for the “science of wo/man”. Have you a paradigm for this new science? Me and Ernest do but we disagree on some aspects.[/b]

I always feel like people fail to grasp what Kuhn’s idea of a paradigm was about, which is the particular example (rather than the over-arching structure) that a scientific community (which is to say, any knowledge-seeking group) follows. The reason I raise this is because I think what Kuhn wanted to demonstrate was that paradigms are open forces, they set out a possible field of enquiry. Thus, a paradigm only becomes obsolete when it stops providing a framework for continued investigation; so Newtonian mechanics was sidelined because it could not account for electromagnetism. This demonstrates that while paradigms are theoretical, they arise in response to events (or discoveries, in scientific parlance). We need to be careful, essentially, not to confuse normal science, which is an open system, with normative science, which is closed.

All of this is equally true in the domain of human science, and one could identify hundreds of potential paradigms there simply by casting a glance across the history of those disciplines. If what you are advocating is a holistic approach, then it would be a question of how effective any potential paradigm might be at, on the one hand, capturing the prevailing mood and, on the other, opening up a field of enquiry.

matty

I think that the human sciences cannot develop paradigms in the rigorous manner that Kuhn speaks of. That is to say, that the human sciences will never be the “normal science” as Kuhn defines it. However, it is useful, I think, to use the word “paradigm” but perhaps speaking of it as a “soft paradigm”.

Practitioners of normal science have:

  1. A paradigm that defines the theory, rules and standards of practice.
  2. Expertise as puzzle-solvers. Puzzles are assumed to have solutions.
  3. A criterion for choosing problems for solution.
  4. Concrete problems for solution i.e. problems with solutions and only lack of ingenuity causes failure.

Practitioners of other than normal sciences must depend upon their combined wisdom to muddle through problems dropped in their laps by fate. We all, in our normal routine of living, are practitioners of other than normal science. Our educational system offers all of us little preparation for the problems we encounter in life.

In the essay “Logic of Discovery or Psychology of Research?” in the book “Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge” Thomas Kuhn details a fundamental difference between himself and Sir Karl Popper. This fundamental difference rests on the concept “puzzle”. It relates to the difference between solving puzzles versus problem solving.

All puzzles have solutions. (According to Kuhn) All problems do not have solutions. We have crossword puzzles, math puzzles, jigsaw puzzles, chess puzzles, etc. All domains of knowledge that are guided by paradigms contain scientists who solve puzzles. Science moves forward primarily as a matter of accretion rather than giant steps. This is why science is so successful. Only under revolutionary conditions does science move forward in leaps. A good example might be that Newton’s Law of Gravity was supreme for about 250 years until Einstein presented his Special Theory of Relativity in 1900.

I think it is worth while to try to sit in Popper’s chair or Kuhn’s chair for a minute. These individuals are exploring new intellectual territory and have only common language to communicate their discoveries. A good example is the word “puzzle”. Kuhn sees a very important distinction about science that few people understand. He has chosen ‘puzzle’ to express the concept he wants to communicate. We must recognize that Kuhn is attempting to describe a forest with this word and if we get all engrossed in hugging this one tree we can never understand the issue Kuhn is trying to communicate.

I think it is important to create a model of the message so that we can understand how to prioritize the different words and concepts. Otherwise we find our self wrestling around in the dust without acquiring new and important information.

I think this is only because it is hard science that has defined the paramaters for scientific practice (in the broad sense of the accumulation of knowledge). It is unreasonable to judge the soft sciences by the criteria of the hard sciences, and vice versa. They have their own internal logics, which can be compared and contrasted but should not be equalised.

The puzzle is the theoretical field within which practical scientific procedures are elaborated. I have no problem with this. However, this is not the same concept that Kuhn sought to communicate through his idea of the paradigm, which was my point. None of this, however, excludes the human sciences.

I agree, we end up with a naive eclecticism, but that doesn’t preclude us from being rigorous about our definitions of those words and concepts.

Thats worse than nonsense. Massive amounts of what was known as ‘soft science’ research into psycholgy/behavorial science follows the critera of all science. Theres no thing as soft science. Theres scientific psycholgy and empty baseless psycholgy that people want taken seriously.

We could call lots of freudian theory soft science and neuropsychiatry/cognitive science ‘hard science’. But in reality one set is scientific while the other is biased conjecture. Again PLENTY of psycholgy IS HARD SCIENCE plenty of it ISN’T SCIENCE at all.

Theres a way to use ‘hard science’ to explain behavior, its just abandoned by massive amounts.

The science of behavior FOR EVERY nonhuman animal for example. The study of brain damaged humans to highlight NORMAL function in nondamaged people etc. THATS just ignored to create biased theories of ‘learning’ outside of explanation of the learning mechanisms. soft science ISN’T science.

Such sloppy thinking being accepted in social sciences is the whole reason for generations of social scientists beleiving their ideas don’t need any real world verification and has led to people like Clifford Geertz suggesting the complete abadonment of principled casual scientific analysis entirely.

and dozens of social scientists jumping on board with that idea.

Social scientists lately have viewed casual analysis of in/out mechanisms as sloppy thinking when in reality, their vauge, no-explanation nonsense isn’t science. The cognitive science revolution has SHOWN US CLEARLY that this kind of bullshit thought isn’t needed for progression of social or behavorial sciences.

Seriously the massive leaps cognitive science, neuropsychiatry, evolutionary psychology, cognitive neuroscience, evolutionary cognitive neuroscience, hunter-gatherer studies, cross cultural studies, linguistic studies have jumped ahead in/with hard science and MANY MANY other fields, including some of those in more traditional psychology, it makes no sense to me to suggest that hard sciecne and soft sciecne are ‘different’ opposed to most behavorial/social theories not being science at all, and those which are, reward the scientific literature massively.

Even behavorial genetics for example.

Making psychology conceptually integrated with biology and anthropology and other forms of science is a neccessity for ANY SCIENTIFIC FIELD results from biology/physics can’t contradict each other or one is wrong, science forms a interlocked frame-work of ideas, when these ideas start successfully integrating thats cause for celebration, not fearful cries about how soft science is real.

Psychology/behavorial ‘soft’ science has been massively integrating into the ‘hard sciences’ and becoming a hard science in its own right, other psychology/behavorial ideas, just are bad science or not science at all.

I am not claiming that the human sciences are sciences in the sense you seem to think I am. I am only advocating a broader understanding of science as knowledge-formation in this context, wherein the emergence of paradigms and the elaboration of theoretical structures might be possible. I am not arguing against interaction and interdisciplinarity, indeed I have studied it closely within the humanities. My concern was to broaden the implications for the observations about Kuhn beyond the realm of the physical sciences and to defend their applicability in studies of social life, where they provide a means for understanding and elaborating practice within those disciplines (not the validity or otherwise of their knowledge claims in a general sense). Perhaps if you had adopted a less hyperbolic and confrontational attitude you might have picked up on that.

I think that our major problem comes from the fact that new theories in the natural sciences quickly enter into the culture whereas those new theories of the human sciences take generations to spread to the culture. This places our intellectual sophistication far behind our technological sophistication. This results in dangerous situations. We are like children playing in pools of gasoline while playing with matches.

No my problem was the term ‘softscience’. its either science or not science. Especially in light of the fact that being labeled differently or not having to be defined by ‘hard’ scientific criteria is what legions of modern social scientists want. The statement I quoted I still take issue with, doesn’t seem a whole lot more reasonable now.

and if by human science you mean psycholgy/behavior science they are hard sciences theres just giant factions which aren’t science at all in them. Theres plenty of hard science psycholgy, most just isn’t science at all.

for example some antidepressants can’t beat placebos in trials but psychiatrists come to dumb ideas about why they work. Their ideas aren’t ‘soft’ science they’re just everyday bullshit. As is true of most things ‘soft science’

It’s just terminology, it’s not the end of the world if we disagree about it.

Are you suggesting that the only viable social science is psychology/behavioural science, or at least something which conforms to its methodologies? Can you sketch in plain and simple terms what that should involve?

I’m saying the only viable social sciences are those which follow the scientific criteria of science rules which things like biology/physics obey. Otherwise its nonscience. Plenty of good psycholgy exists like that but most isn’t.

falsifiability, testable predictions, etc.

most freudian theories for example or socioanthropological ideas just aren’t science or bad science. (admitedly theres science scattered throughout even important ideas) but overall its junk.