Does science consist in the progressive development of objective truth? Contrast the views of Kuhn with one other writer on this topic.

According to Kuhn, science has to develop prior assumptions that reevaluate prior facts before it acquires its first universally received paradigm. An example from our “Case History on the Concept of Electrical Charge” is the discoveries of Gilbert and Cabeo. Gilberts experiment lead him to believe that the effluvium emitted by an excited electric acts directly on the body rather than acting indirectly by setting un an air current that moves the body. But after Cabeo looked at Gilberts work he went to conclude a different hypothesis, which was that his observation that objects sometimes rebound or are repelled by rubbed “electrics” is that if there were no air around the electric, it could not attract the objects when rubbed. Cabeo’s hypothesis

Van Fraassen’s conception of empirical adequacy can preserve truth across Kuhnian theory change, because we generally don’t change our beliefs about observations, even when our theory changes. And you’ll have to bring in the notion of the theory-ladenness of observation, and try to maintain that it doesn’t imply that our observation statements do change when we change our theoretical commitments. The idea there might draw on what you said at the end of your thesis: That we are observing the same thing but perceiving it differently. I.e., perhaps we can say that in describing observations, we are stating true things in different frameworks, and the change of the framework does not alter the content of that statement. This would be a good place to bring in

In Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolution, he presents that science is a cycle that has a paradigm, which begins with a period of normal science, a crisis, revolution, then a paradigm change.

The decision of subject material implies that the variable nature of confirmation being utilized as a part of his contentions occupies from the principle discourse of a theory of science. I imagined that some of his contentions utilized absolutes while science in this present reality works inside the limits of likelihood and pragmatics. The utilization of likelihood and a down to business way to deal with science has created helpful outcomes and mirrors desires individuals have of their collaborations with the outside

Instead, science and knowledge can and need to be depicted in a different light, which entails changes in the notions of objectivity, validity, reliability, and truth, rather than obliteration of these notions. It is quite telling that this was apparently clear to many scholars, already in the early twentieth century, who pioneered some of the most significant breakthroughs across humanities and sciences. For example, when William James stated in 1907, quite poetically and prophetically, that “[p]urely objective truth . . . is nowhere to be found” because “the trail of the human serpent is . . . over everything” (p. 60), this position did not imply a rejection of knowledge pursuits and of truth. Or, when Lev Vygotsky wrote that “everything described as a fact is already a theory” (1997a, p. 249) and that “pure objectivity in the educator is utter nonsense” (1997c, p. 349), he was not dismissing science and objectivity. Similarly, when Niels Bohr accepted the radical premise that “[i]t is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how nature is” (quoted in Newton, 2009, p. 40), independently of our questions, instruments, and methodologies, this did not imply the impossibility of physics but instead, laid grounds for its most significant

Kuhn himself used the term rather loosely in his landmark book “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions”, referring to either the laws and principles that govern scientific inquiry within a specific field or just a collection of landmark works showcasing a common body of beliefs. Although one could consider arguing that the Copernican revolution (but definitely not Copernicus himself) started the shift away from deriving scientific knowledge from scripture and thus he started a paradigm shift in the former sense, those implications are fairly removed from Copernicus himself. As such, arguing whether he initiated a paradigm shift in the latter sense is a more meaningful

The Structure of the Scientific Revolution by Thomas Kuhn explains how most people in the science community interpret accurately how they see science. The book begins with a chapter on how scientist have to have a set of belief that is the basis for what they are doing. When new phenomenon occur that have not been explained new theories are created on those events and tested so that people can learn why the event occurred in the first place. Then Kuhn elaborates on the route of normal science with how scientist do research on items that need to be explained or events and items that have been figured out but experiments need to be done to prove that the results are correct after which students learn about the research that has been done. These

One possible interpretation of Kuhn’s assertion that scientists work in a different world, post scientific revolution, could be explained through literally interpreting Kuhn’s usage of the word “world” to mean a different plane of existence altogether. During his discussion of paradigms and their effects on worldview, Kuhn states that “during revolutions, scientists see new and different things when looking with familiar instruments in places they have looked before. It is rather as if the professional community had been suddenly transported to another planet where familiar objects are seen in a different light” (Kuhn 111). The example Kuhn provides on the discovery of Uranus illustrates this point; the planet now known as Uranus had been observed to be, on separate occasions,

In this essay I attempt to answer the following two questions: What is Karl Popper's view of science? Do I feel that Thomas Kuhn makes important points against it? The two articles that I make reference to are "Science: Conjectures and Refutations" by Karl Popper and "Logic of Discovery or Psychology of Research?" by Thomas Kuhn. Both articles appear in the textbook to this class.

The theories of relativity were revolutionary. Everybody agrees that Einstein brought about this revolution. Even the people that claim that Einstein just tweaked the theories of Lorentz and Poincaré, admit that Einstein was the first to recognize the physical meaning of the formulations. He understood that the terms and concepts like those of absolute space and absolute time must lose there meaning and other concepts had to replace them, if we were to be able to understand the phenomena of electrodynamics. All this is consistent with a scientific revolution as conceived of by Kuhn. It is then possible to express the revolution in science that Einstein started in terms of Kuhn’s paradigms and paradigm shifts.

The following essay aims to discuss the calms made by Alan Chalmers, discussing his inductive views of the scientific method stating that “Scientific knowledge is proven knowledge…” and that “…Scientific knowledge is reliable knowledge because it is objectively proven knowledge.” I will also be discussing Karl Popper’s opposing views on the scientific method, siding with his falsification method. I think that even though both sides are rational, Alan Chalmers clams are more practical and better for humans to continue to investigate new theories and laws of the universe. Therefore, I oppose Popper’s stance on the scientific method due to it discrediting non data driven fields sciences, labelling them as simply not science due to their inability to be disproven. To begin, the two opposing perspectives of the scientific method; inductivism and falsificationism, will be briefly explained with arguments for and against laid out.

Scientific realism has long been debated as one of the many perspectives in the philosophy of science. As it explores the very basis of scientific knowledge, it is an attitude that finds itself intimately linked to nearly all aspects of the field. By convention, scientific realism varies in its definition, however according to the Stanford Encylopedia of Philosophy it has a core body of ideas composed of an “epistemically positive attitude towards the outputs of scientific investigation, regarding both observable and unobservable aspects of the world”. In order to display the apt nature of this attitude it is important to touch on the likes of the significance of human perspective and the idea of a mind-indepedent world, the Inference of the Best Explanation Theory and the idea of observable and unobservable entities. Scientific realism is an efficient attitude in the philosophy of science as it draws focus away from purely human conception to unobservable entities which all of which point to scientific realism being a superior attitude among others in the philosophy of science.

In this essay I attempt to answer the following two questions: What is Karl Popper’s view of science? Do I feel that Thomas Kuhn makes important points against it? The two articles that I make reference to are "Science: Conjectures and Refutations" by Karl Popper and "Logic of Discovery or Psychology of Research?" by Thomas Kuhn.

Many philosophers and researchers have attempted to define what progress and scientific progress really is. Physicist Thomas Kuhn, in 1963, described science as an internally driven venture which was bolstered and structured by paradigms (Kuhn & Schlegel, 1963). Douglas, addressing this definition points out that Kuhn wasn’t able to describe scientific progress across multiple paradigms. To fix this issue and to provide her own take on progress, she confronts the distinction between pure and applied science. She explained that the key to understanding scientific progress was understanding what science is (Douglas, 2014). Science can be

Popper and Kuhn held differing views on the nature of scientific progress. As seen in Popper’s falsification theory, he held that theories can never be proved only disproved or falsified. Once a theory is proved false we move on to the next. Kuhn, on the other, hand argued a new paradigm may solve puzzles better than the old one but you cannot describe the old science as false. Both seem to share the Kantian idea that the really real, independently existing world is completely unknowable. Kuhn further asserts that the empirical world, which is knowable, is partly constructed by our categories and concepts. The fundamental difference in their views are best stated in Kuhn’s own words, “A very different approach to this whole network of problems has been developed by Karl R. Popper who denies the existence of any verification procedures at all. Instead he emphasizes the importance of falsification, i.e., of the test that, because its outcome is negative, necessitates the rejection of an established theory. Clearly, the role thus attributed to falsification is much like the one this essay assigns to anomalous experiences, i.e., to experiences that, by evoking crisis, prepare the way for a new theory. Nevertheless, anomalous experiences may not be identified with falsifying ones.”(Kuhn, 145) As seen by this passage, the fundamental difference between Popper and Kuhn is that Popper disregards “verification” and Kuhn asserts that “falsification” only takes place once a