Bible Science First Test (Kuhn it up.)

What is the nature of cultural bias in realtion to science, according to Harringtion? How does it affect learning and the process of discovery, in his view?

Cultural biases are limitations imposed on the creative aspects of science, fo they prevent us from grasping the meaning of data. It creates a way of looking at things in terms of what we already believe to be true. Effective learning is frequently accomplished by setting biases aside, looking at info in a new way, & making a personal discovery of what really is.

Distinguish between inductive and deductive reasonings (logic). Which is used more often by the scientist?

Inductive: collection of facts leads to a conclusion -least astonishment -scientists Deduction: use general ideas to think of individual facts -diet

Creational Monotheism

One Creator God who is absolutely free and independent in His creative acts. Nothing, no other gods, no pre-existing constraints of matter, no rival forces of any kind, limits the Creator.

Scientific realism

Reality exists whether we know about it or not, and our scientific theories aim at correctly describing reality and sometimes have at least partial success in doing so.

Constructivism

Reality is constructed by the ways we resolve conflicts in the social relationships of the scholarly community.

Induction

Reasoning from several similar specific cases to a general rule. Induction is never formally certain, but it can still be overwhelmingly compelling of belief.

Deduction

Reasoning to a conclusion which is certain given the premises. Typically proceeds from general principles down to specific cases:

List and explain the main ways in which paradigms win converts, according to Kuhn.

Still, to say that resistance is inevitable and legitimate, that paradigm change cannot be justified by proof, is not to say that no arguments are relevant or that scientists cannot be persuaded to change their minds. Though a generation is sometimes required to effect the change, scientific communities have again and again been converted to new paradigms. Furthermore, these conversions occur not despite the fact that scientists are human but because they are. Though some scientists, particularly the older and more experienced ones, may resist indefinitely, most of them can be reached in one way or another. Conversions will occur a few at a time until, after the last holdouts have died, the whole profession will again be practicing under a single, but now a different, paradigm. We must therefore ask how conversion is induced and how resisted. What sort of answer to that question may we expect? Just because it is asked about techniques of persuasion, or about argument and counterargument in a situation in which there can be no proof, our question is a new one, demanding a sort of study that has not previously been undertaken. We shall have to settle for a very partial and impressionistic survey. In addition, what has already been said combines with the result of that survey to suggest that, when asked about persuasion rather than proof, the question of the nature of scientific argument has no single or uniform answer. Individual scientists embrace a new paradigm for all sorts of reasons and usually for several at once. Some of these reasons—for example, the sun worship that helped make Kepler a Copernican—lie outside the apparent sphere of science entirely.9 Others must depend upon idiosyncrasies of autobiography and personality. Even the nationality or the prior reputation of the innovator and his teachers can sometimes play a significant role.10 Ultimately, therefore, we must learn to ask this question differently. Our concern will not then be with the arguments that in fact convert one or another individual, but rather with the sort of community that always sooner or later re-forms as a single group. That problem, however, I postpone to the final section, examining meanwhile some of the sorts of argument that prove particularly effective in the battles over paradigm change. Probably the single most prevalent claim advanced by the proponents of a new paradigm is that they can solve the problems that have led the old one to a crisis. When it can legitimately be made, this claim is often the most effective one possible. In the area for which it is advanced the paradigm is known to be in trouble. That trouble has repeatedly been explored, and attempts to remove it have again and again proved vain. "Crucial experiments"—those able to discriminate particularly sharply between the two paradigms—have been recognized and attested before the new paradigm was even invented. Copernicus thus claimed that he had solved the long-vexing problem of the length of the calendar year, Newton that he had reconciled terrestrial and celestial mechanics, Lavoisier that he had solved the problems of gas-identity and of weight relations, and Einstein that he had made electrodynamics compatible with a revised science of motion. Claims of this sort are particularly likely to succeed if the new paradigm displays a quantitative precision strikingly better than its older competitor. The quantitative superiority of Kepler's Rudolphine tables to all those computed from the Ptolemaic theory was a major factor in the conversion of astronomers to Copernicanism. Newton's success in predicting quantitative astronomical observations was probably the single most important reason for his theory's triumph over its more reasonable but uniformly qualitative competitors. And in this century the striking quantitative success of both Planck's radiation law and the Bohr atom quickly persuaded many physicists to adopt them even though, viewing physical science as a whole, both these contributions created many more problems than they solved.11 The claim to have solved the crisis-provoking problems is, however, rarely sufficient by itself. Nor can it always legitimately be made. In fact, Copernicus' theory was not more accurate than Ptolemy's and did not lead directly to any improvement in the calendar. Or again, the wave theory of light was not, for some years after it was first announced, even as successful as its corpuscular rival in resolving the polarization effects that were a principal cause of the optical crisis. Sometimes the looser practice that characterizes extraordinary research will produce a candidate for paradigm that initially helps not at all with the problems that have evoked crisis. When that occurs, evidence must be drawn from other parts of the field as it often is anyway. In those other areas particularly persuasive arguments can be developed if the new paradigm permits the prediction of phenomena that had been entirely unsuspected while the old one prevailed. Copernicus' theory, for example, suggested that planets should be like the earth, that Venus should show phases, and that the universe must be vastly larger than had previously been supposed. As a result, when sixty years after his death the telescope suddenly displayed mountains on the moon, the phases of Venus, and an immense number of previously unsuspected stars, those observations brought the new theory a great many converts, particularly among non-astronomers.12 In the case of the wave theory, one main source of professional conversions was even more dramatic. French resistance collapsed suddenly and relatively completely when Fresnel was able to demonstrate the existence of a white spot at the center of the shadow of a circular disk. That was an effect that not even he had anticipated but that Poisson, initially one of his opponents, had shown to be a necessary if absurd consequence of Fresnel's theory.13 Because of their shock value and because they have so obviously not been "built into" the new theory from the start, arguments like these prove especially persuasive. And sometimes that extra strength can be exploited even though the phenomenon in question had been observed long before the theory that accounts for it was first introduced. Einstein, for example, seems not to have anticipated that general relativity would account with precision for the well-known anomaly in the motion of Mercury's perihelion, and he experienced a corresponding triumph when it did so.14 All the arguments for a new paradigm discussed so far have been based upon the competitors' comparative ability to solve problems. To scientists those arguments are ordinarily the most significant and persuasive. The preceding examples should leave no doubt about the source of their immense appeal. But, for reasons to which we shall shortly revert, they are neither individually nor collectively compelling. Fortunately, there is also another sort of consideration that can lead scientists to reject an old paradigm in favor of a new. These are the arguments, rarely made entirely explicit, that appeal to the individual's sense of the appropriate or the aesthetic—the new theory is said to be "neater," "more suitable," or "simpler" than the old. Probably such arguments are less effective in the sciences than in mathematics. The early versions of most new paradigms are crude. By the time their full aesthetic appeal can be developed, most of the community has been persuaded by other means. Nevertheless, the importance of aesthetic considerations can sometimes be decisive. Though they often attract only a few scientists to a new theory, it is upon those few that its ultimate triumph may depend. If they had not quickly taken it up for highly individual reasons, the new candidate for paradigm might never have been sufficiently developed to attract the allegiance of the scientific community as a whole. To see the reason for the importance of these more subjective and aesthetic considerations, remember what a paradigm debate is about. When a new candidate for paradigm is first proposed, it has seldom solved more than a few of the problems that confront it, and most of those solutions are still far from perfect. Until Kepler, the Copernican theory scarcely improved upon the predictions of planetary position made by Ptolemy. When Lavoisier saw oxygen as "the air itself entire," his new theory could cope not at all with the problems presented by the proliferation of new gases, a point that Priestley made with great success in his counterattack. Cases like Fresnel's white spot are extremely rare. Ordinarily, it is only much later, after the new paradigm has been developed, accepted, and exploited that apparently decisive arguments— the Foucault pendulum to demonstrate the rotation of the earth or the Fizeau experiment to show that light moves faster in air than in water— are developed. Producing them is part of normal science, and their role is not in paradigm debate but in postrevolutionary texts.

Scientific Omnicompetence

The view that science is (in principle) capable of explaining everything in the universe. When combined with methodological naturalism, the end result is indistinguishable from ontological naturalism

Theism/Monotheism

There is only one god who is of unlimited power, goodness and freedom, and the source and absolute creator of everything else. He is as unlike the gods of polytheism as electricity is an electric light

Panentheism

Typical a variant of monotheism that rejects the transcendence of God to put as much emphasis as possible on the immanence of God. Immanence means the presence of God within the world - infusing the world the way the way blood infuses the body and is the source of life of it. Shares with Deism the rejection of the need for miracles - everything the universe does is God's doing from within, so there is no need for intervention from "out there" In modern use, often coupled with the idea of a limited, developing God.

What elements of truth exist for the propsition that "science causes secularization"?

-Definitions of secularization usually refer to the displacement of religious authority and control by civic power and the loss of beliefs characteristic to religious traditions -Religion filled in what science couldn't. Hobbes. -Scientific advances has clashed with conventional readings of sacred texts. Galileo. -"non-Jewish Jew" scientist in 20th century.

Briefly describe the factors other than science, that contribute to secularization.

-Expansion of secularism can be correlated with social, political, and economic transformations -Mobility (social and geographical) facture communities bound by faith -Hedonism (from consumerism) threatens religious commitments -Compelling attractions -Secular values in media and education -Nationality and political party loyalty instead

What are the three normal areas of factual investigation in normal science? Give examples of each.

-First is that class of facts that the paradigm has shown to be particularly revealing of the nature of things. By employing them in solving problems, the paradigm has made them worth determining both with more precision and in a larger variety of situations. -in astronomy—-stellar position and magnitude, the periods of eclipsing binaries and of planets; in physics—the specific gravities and compressibilities of materials, wave lengths and spectral intensities, electrical conductivities and contact potentials; and in chemistry— composition and combining weights, boiling points and acidity of solutions, structural formulas and optical activities -A second usual but smaller class of factual determinations is directed to those facts that, though often without much intrinsic interest, can be compared directly with predictions from the paradigm theory. --Special telescopes to demonstrate the Copernican prediction of annual parallax; Atwood's machine, first invented almost a century after the Principia, to give the first unequivocal demonstration of Newton's second law; Foucault's apparatus to show that the speed of light is greater in air than in water; or the gigantic scintillation counter designed to demonstrate the existence of the neutrino—these pieces of special apparatus and many others like them illustrate the immense effort and ingenuity that have been required to bring nature and theory into closer and closer agreement. -A third class of experiments and observations exhausts, I think, the fact-gathering activities of normal science. It consists of empirical work undertaken to articulate the paradigm theory, resolving some of its residual ambiguities and permitting the solution of problems to which it had previously only drawn attention. --In the more mathematical sciences, some of the experiments aimed at articulation are directed to the determination of physical constants. Newton's work, for example, indicated that the force between two unit masses at unit distance would be the same for all types of matter at all positions in the universe. Because of its central position in physical theory, improved values of the gravitational constant have been the object of repeated efforts ever since by a number of outstanding experimentalists.

Explain the difference between secularization of science and secularization by science.

-Secularization of science: removing religious language from science -Secularization by science: science being the cause for seculization of society

State briefly the fundamental assumptions upon which science rests. Explain the three other assumptions which are tied up with this first assumption, according to Harrington.

1) Nature can be understood -reality has concrete situations where the idea of reality is easily accepted -nature can be perceived the same by different people -human reason is reliable 2) every effect has 1 or more causes Science works best this way.

Davis writes that until recently, scholars believed that Newton's work in theology, biblical prophecy, church history, and alchemy did not affect his scientific work. What two things oppose this idea?

1) Newton's alchemical and theological manuscripts now have been studied by community of experts who have studied both the papers and historical context have been studied more fully 2) looking at Newton for what he said and did without a cultural lense

Give the two criteria that must be met to allow a conclusion reached inductively to be reasonable by scientists. Does the satisfaction of thse criteria mean than a conclusion is absolutely right? Why or why not?

1) nothing more probable is discovered to replace the first conclusion 2) no contradictions are found that require the conclusion to be rejected No. The guesses that remain must contain reality or must eventually be discarded through the crissis of contradiction.

What two reasons does Lindberg give for why the early church should not be seen as a true opponent of genuine science?

1) sciences did not have a high priority, but Augustine's handmaiden idea allowed for discoveries by religious scholars 2) no other institution or cultural force of parasitic period offered more encouragement for the investigation of nature than the church

What are the kinds of theoretical problems addressed within normal science? Give examples.

A part of normal theoretical work, though only a small part, consists simply in the use of existing theory to predict factual information of intrinsic value. These are the manipulations of theory undertaken, not because the predictions in which they result are intrinsically valuable, but because they can be confronted directly with experiment. Their purpose is to display a new application of the paradigm or to increase the precision of an application that has already been made.

What are some of the effects of a crisis or breakdown in a paradigm based tradition of normal science? How do scientists report feeling? How does it alter how scientists behave?

All crises begin with the blurring of a paradigm and the consequent loosening of the rules for normal research. In this respect research during crisis very much resembles research during the preparadigm period, except that in the former the locus of difference is both smaller and more clearly defined. And all crises close in one of three ways. Sometimes normal science ultimately proves able to handle the crisis-provoking problem despite the despair of those who have seen it as the end of an existing paradigm. On other occasions the problem resists even apparently radical new approaches. Then scientists may conclude that no solution will be forthcoming in the present state of their field. The problem is labelled and set aside for a future generation with more developed tools. Or, finally, the case that will most concern us here, a crisis may end with the emergence of a new candidate for paradigm and with the ensuing battle over its acceptance.

Positivism

All knowledge is based on sensory experience (expanded in any reliable way) and mathematical and logical reasoning based on sensory experience. Intuition, innate ideas, moral sensibilities and introspection are not sound foundations for knowledge. Tends to skeptical about anything beyond the reach of sensory experience, such as laws of nature or purely theoretical constructions.

1. While Kuhn acknowledges that we may never understand how a person invents a new paradigm, he gives two common characteristics of those who do. What are they?

Almost always the men who achieve these fundamental inventions of a new paradigm have been either very young or very new to the field whose paradigm they change.15 And perhaps that point need not have been made explicit, for obviously these are the men who, being little committed by prior practice to the traditional rules of normal science, are particularly likely to see that those rules no longer define a playable game and to conceive another set that can replace them.

What are the two circumstances that tend to be associated with those individuals who first see a new paradigm and lead the way toward its acceptance?

Any new interpretation of nature, whether a discovery or a theory, emerges first in the mind of one or a few individuals. It is they who first learn to see science and the world differently, and their ability to make the transition is facilitated by two circumstances that are not common to most other members of their profession. Invariably their attention has been intensely concentrated upon the crisis-provoking problems; usually, in addition, they are men so young or so new to the crisis-ridden field that practice has committed them less deeply than most of their contemporaries to the world view and rules determined by the old paradigm. How are they able, what must they do, to convert the entire profession or the relevant professional subgroup to their way of seeing science and the world? What causes the group to abandon one tradition of normal research in favor of another?

Why is it that more detailed historical study has made it difficult for historians of science to fulfill their tasks under the traditional concept of scientific development?

As chroniclers of an incremental process, they discover that additional research makes it harder, not easier, to answer questions like: When was oxygen discovered? Who first conceived of energy conservation? Increasingly, a few of them suspect that these are simply the wrong sorts of questions to ask. Perhaps science does not develop by the accumulation of individual discoveries and inventions. (More research gives more possible answers.) That is why a new theory, however special its range of application, is seldom or never just an increment to what is already known. Its assimilation requires the reconstruction of prior theory and the re-evaluation of prior fact, an intrinsically revolutionary process that is seldom completed by a single man and never overnight. No wonder historians have had difficulty in dating precisely this extended process that their vocabulary impels them to view as an isolated event. The more carefully they study, say, Aristotelian dynamics, phlogistic chemistry, or caloric thermodynamics, the more certain they feel that those once current views of nature were, as a whole, neither less scientific nor more the product of human idiosyncrasy than those current today. (It also becomes difficult to distinguish what counts as "science.")

What are the different things which happen to a field of investigation once a paradigm becomes dominant?

As these indications hint, it is sometimes just its reception of a paradigm that transforms a group previously interested merely in the study of nature into a profession or, at least, a discipline. In the sciences (though not in fields like medicine, technology, and law, of which the principal raison d'être is an external social need), the formation of specialized journals, the foundation of specialists' societies, and the claim for a special place in the curriculum have usually been associated with a group's first reception of a single paradigm. At least this was the case between the time, a century and a half ago, when the institutional pattern of scientific specialization first developed and the very recent time when the paraphernalia of specialization acquired a prestige of their own. The more rigid definition of the scientific group has other consequences. When the individual scientist can take a paradigm for granted, he need no longer, in his major works, attempt to build his field anew, starting from first principles and justify- ing the use of each concept introduced. That can be left to the writer of textbooks. Given a textbook, however, the creative scientist can begin his research where it leaves off and thus concentrate exclusively upon the subtlest and most esoteric aspects of the natural phenomena that concern his group. And as he does this, his research communiqués will begin to change in ways whose evolution has been too little studied but whose modern end products are obvious to all and oppressive to many. No longer will his researches usually be embodied in books addressed, like Franklin's Experiments . . . on Electricity or Darwin's Origin of Species, to anyone who might be interested in the subject matter of the field. Instead they will usually appear as brief articles addressed only to professional colleagues, the men whose knowledge of a shared paradigm can be assumed and who prove to be the only ones able to read the papers addressed to them.

Describe the "scientific method" of Sir Francis Bacon. What is the fundamental flaw in his method?

Bacon described science as being an unbiased way of collecting observations and data free from personal experiences or thoughts. The scientific method is a way of doing that in order to obtain the truths of the world. It is flawed because it everything that makes up how we do science (questions asked, tools used) are based off of presumptions. Bacon's idea of science being free of prejudices is impossible.

Pantheism

Behind the confusion of appearances, lies a single reality, which we call God. Ralph Waldo Emerson expresses pantheism with his paraphrase of the Bhagavad Gita "I am the sacrifice and the prayer. When from me men fly, I am the wings." The only real being is God, and every appearance of not-god is illusion.

Polytheism

Belief in multiple limited but superhuman persons who are the focus of worship, petition and culturally significant stories. Often, aspects of the observable world are attributed to different superhumans.

Atheism

Belief that God does not exist. A purely negative thesis, which is therefore impossible to prove. In our culture, usually comes from a commitment to ontological naturalism. Can be derived from methodological naturalism and scientific omnicompetence.

What are Kuhn's examples of gestalt switches that he offers as parallel to what happens in a paradigm switch in science?

But on that point there is a rich body of psychological literature, much of it stemming from the pioneering work of the Hanover Institute. An experimental subject who puts on goggles fitted with inverting lenses initially sees the entire world upside down. At the start his perceptual apparatus functions as it had been trained to function in the absence of the goggles, and the result is extreme disorientation, an acute personal crisis. But after the subject has begun to learn to deal with his new world, his entire visual field flips over, usually after an intervening period in which vision is simply confused. Thereafter, objects are again seen as they had been before the goggles were put on. The assimilation of a previously anomalous visual field has reacted upon and changed the field itself.1 Literally as well as metaphorically, the man accustomed to inverting lenses has undergone a revolutionary transformation of vision. The subjects of the anomalous playing-card experiment discussed in Section VI experienced a quite similar transformation. Until taught by prolonged exposure that the universe contained anomalous cards, they saw only the types of cards for which previous experience had equipped them. Yet once experience had provided the requisite additional categories, they were able to see all anomalous cards on the first inspection long enough to permit any identification at all. Still other experiments demonstrate that the perceived size, color, and so on, of experimentally displayed objects also varies with the subject's previous training and experience.

Explain Kuhn's claim: "Paradigms are not corrigible by normal science at all."

But that interpretive enterprise—and this was the burden of the paragraph before last—can only articulate a paradigm, not correct it. Paradigms are not corrigible by normal science at all. Instead, as we have already seen, normal science ultimately leads only to the recognition of anomalies and to crises. And these are terminated, not by deliberation and interpretation, but by a relatively sudden and unstructured event like the gestalt switch. Scientists then often speak of the "scales falling from the eyes" or of the "lightning flash" that "inundates" a previously obscure puzzle, enabling its components to be seen in a new way that for the first time permits its solution. On other occasions the relevant illumination comes in sleep.13 No ordinary sense of the term 'interpretation' fits these flashes of intuition through which a new paradigm is born. Though such intuitions depend upon the experience, both anomalous and congruent, gained with the old paradigm, they are not logically or piecemeal linked to particular items of that experience as an interpretation would be. Instead, they gather up large portions of that experience and transform them to the rather different bundle of experience that will thereafter be linked piecemeal to the new paradigm but not to the old.

Explain this key quotation: "To reject one paradigm without simultaneously substituting another is to reject science itself."

But that rejection of science in favor of another occupation is, I think, the only sort of paradigm rejection to which counterinstances by themselves can lead. Once a first paradigm through which to view nature has been found, there is no such thing as research in the absence of any paradigm. To reject one paradigm without simultaneously substituting another is to reject science itself. That act reflects not on the paradigm but on the man. Inevitably he will be seen by his colleagues as "the carpenter who blames his tools."

Why does Kuhn say that these pre-paradigm stages of investigation, which are the norm rather than the exception, are "something less than science"?

But though this sort of fact-collecting has been essential to the origin of many significant sciences, anyone who examines, for example, Pliny's encyclopedic writings or the Baconian natural histories of the seventeenth century will discover that it produces a morass. One somehow hesitates to call the literature that results scientific. Moreover, since the casual fact-gatherer seldom possesses the time or the tools to be critical, the natural histories often juxtapose descriptions like the above with others, say, heating by antiperistasis (or by cooling), that we are now quite unable to confirm.

Why does Kuhn disagree with those who claim that Einstein did not really prove Newton wrong, but only those incautious Newtonians who went beyond the evidence they had to claim that Newton's theories held at very high velocities or deep levels of precision?

But to save theories in this way, their range of application must be restricted to those phenomena and to that precision of observation with which the experimental evidence in hand already deals.4 Carried just a step further (and the step can scarcely be avoided once the first is taken), such a limitation prohibits the scientist from claiming to speak "scientifically" about any phenomenon not already observed. Even in its present form the restriction forbids the scientist to rely upon a theory in his own research whenever that research enters an area or seeks a degree of precision for which past practice with the theory offers no precedent. These prohibitions are logically unexceptionable. But the result of accepting them would be the end of the research through which science may develop further. More important, there is a revealing logical lacuna in the positivist's argument, one that will reintroduce us immediately to the nature of revolutionary change. Can Newtonian dynamics really be derived from relativistic dynamics? What would such a derivation look like? Imagine a set of statements, E1, E2, . . . , En, which together embody the laws of relativity theory. These statements contain variables and parameters representing spatial position, time, rest mass, etc. From them, together with the apparatus of logic and mathematics, is deducible a whole set of further statements including some that can be checked by observation. To prove the adequacy of Newtonian dynamics as a special case, we must add to the E1's additional statements, like (v/c) 2 << 1, restricting the range of the parameters and variables. This enlarged set of statements is then manipulated to yield a new set, N1, N2, . . ., Nm, which is identical in form with Newton's laws of motion, the law of gravity, and so on. Apparently Newtonian dynamics has been derived from Einsteinian, subject to a few limiting conditions. Yet the derivation is spurious, at least to this point. Though the N1's are a special case of the laws of relativistic mechanics, they are not Newton's Laws. Or at least they are not unless those laws are reinterpreted in a way that would have been impossible until after Einstein's work. The variables and parameters that in the Einsteinian E1's represented spatial position, time, mass, etc., still occur in the N1's; and they there still represent Einsteinian space, time, and mass. But the physical referents of these Einsteinian concepts are by no means identical with those of the Newtonian concepts that bear the same name. (Newtonian mass is conserved; Einsteinian is convertible with energy. Only at low relative velocities may the two be measured in the same way, and even then they must not be conceived to be the same.) Unless we change the definitions of the variables in the N1's, the statements we have derived are not Newtonian. If we do change them, we cannot properly be said to have derived Newton's Laws, at least not in any sense of "derive" now generally recognized. Our argument has, of course, explained why Newton's Laws ever seemed to work. In doing so it has justified, say, an automobile driver in acting as though he lived in a Newtonian universe. An argument of the same type is used to justify teaching earth-centered astronomy to surveyors. But the argument has still not done what it purported to do. It has not, that is, shown Newton's Laws to be a limiting case of Einstein's. For in the passage to the limit it is not only the forms of the laws that have changed. Simultaneously we have had to alter the fundamental structural elements of which the universe to which they apply is composed.

Innate and/or Received Ideas

Certain ideas seem to be built into our reasoning processes (or at least the reasoning processes of those in our cultural group) and do not seem justifiable by any of the above. Basic moral reactions, recognition of causation, identification and re-identification of external objects, memory, etc.

According to Kuhn, which is easier for a historian of science, or scientists themselves: identifying the paradigms of a community, or identifying the abstract rules (i.e. the full interpretation and rationalization of the paradigm) which govern the community? Why?

Close historical investigation of a given specialty at a given time discloses a set of recurrent and quasi-standard illustrations of various theories in their conceptual, observational, and instrumental applications. These are the community's paradigms, revealed in its textbooks, lectures, and laboratory exercises. The historian, of course, will discover in addition a penumbral area occupied by achievements whose status is still in doubt, but the core of solved problems and techniques will usually be clear. Despite occasional ambiguities, the paradigms of a mature scientific community can be determined with relative ease. The determination of shared paradigms is not, however, the determination of shared rules. That demands a second step and one of a somewhat different kind. When undertaking it, the historian must compare the community's paradigms with each other and with its current research reports. In doing so, his object is to discover what isolable elements, explicit or implicit, the members of that community may have abstracted from their more global paradigms and deployed as rules in their research.

What does Kuhn see as the weakness of probabilistic theories of verification, such as Nagel's?

Closely examined, this formulation displays unexpected and probably significant parallels to two of the most popular contemporary philosophical theories about verification. Few philosophers of science still seek absolute criteria for the verification of scientific theories. Noting that no theory can ever be exposed to all possible relevant tests, they ask not whether a theory has been verified but rather about its probability in the light of the evidence that actually exists. And to answer that question one important school is driven to compare the ability of different theories to explain the evidence at hand. That insistence on comparing theories also characterizes the historical situation in which a new theory is accepted. Very probably it points one of the directions in which future discussions of verification should go. In their most usual forms, however, probabilistic verification theories all have recourse to one or another of the pure or neutral observation-languages discussed in Section X. One probabilistic theory asks that we compare the given scientific theory with all others that might be imagined to fit the same collection of observed data. Another demands the construction in imagination of all the tests that the given scientific theory might conceivably be asked to pass.1 Apparently some such construction is necessary for the computation of specific probabilities, absolute or relative, and it is hard to see how such a construction can possibly be achieved. If, as I have already urged, there can be no scientifically or empirically neutral system of language or concepts, then the proposed construction of alternate tests and theories must proceed from within one or another paradigm-based tradition. Thus restricted it would have no access to all possible experiences or to all possible theories. As a result, probabilistic theories disguise the verification situation as much as they illuminate it. Though that situation does, as they insist, depend upon the comparison of theories and of much widespread evidence, the theories and observations at issue are always closely related to ones already in existence. Verification is like natural selection: it picks out the most viable among the actual alternatives in a particular historical situation. Whether that choice is the best that could have been made if still other alternatives had been available or if the data had been of another sort is not a question that can usefully be asked. There are no tools to employ in seeking answers to it.

Why does Kuhn think it is better to say that scientists under different paradigms see different things rather than that they see the same things but interpret them differently.

Do we, however, really need to describe what separates Galileo from Aristotle, or Lavoisier from Priestley, as a transformation of vision? Did these men really see different things when looking at the same sorts of objects? Is there any legitimate sense in which we can say that they pursued their research in different worlds? Those questions can no longer be postponed, for there is obviously another and far more usual way to describe all of the historical examples outlined above. Many readers will surely want to say that what changes with a paradigm is only the scientist's interpretation of observations that themselves are fixed once and for all by the nature of the environment and of the perceptual apparatus. On this view, Priestley and Lavoisier both saw oxygen, but they interpreted their observations differently; Aristotle and Galileo both saw pendu lums, but they differed in their interpretations of what they both had seen. Let me say at once that this very usual view of what occurs when scientists change their minds about fundamental matters can be neither all wrong nor a mere mistake. Rather it is an essential part of a philosophical paradigm initiated by Descartes and developed at the same time as Newtonian dynamics. That paradigm has served both science and philosophy well. Its exploitation, like that of dynamics itself, has been fruitful of a fundamental understanding that perhaps could not have been achieved in another way. But as the example of Newtonian dynamics also indicates, even the most striking past success provides no guarantee that crisis can be indefinitely postponed. Today research in parts of philosophy, psychology, linguistics, and even art history, all converge to suggest that the traditional paradigm is somehow askew. That failure to fit is also made increasingly apparent by the historical study of science to which most of our attention is necessarily directed here. None of these crisis-promoting subjects has yet produced a viable alternate to the traditional epistemological paradigm, but they do begin to suggest what some of that paradigm's characteristics will be. I am, for example, acutely aware of the difficulties created by saying that when Aristotle and Galileo looked at swinging stones, the first saw constrained fall, the second a pendulum. The same difficulties are presented in an even more fundamental form by the opening sentences of this section: though the world does not change with a change of paradigm, the scientist afterward works in a different world. Nevertheless, I am convinced that we must learn to make sense of statements that at least resemble these. What occurs during a scientific revolution is not fully reducible to a reinterpretation of individual and stable data. In the first place, the data are not unequivocally stable. A pendulum is not a falling stone, nor is oxygen dephlogisticated air. Consequently, the data that scientists collect from these diverse objects are, as we shall shortly see, themselves different. More important, the process by which either the individual or the community makes the transition from constrained fall to the pendulum or from dephlogisticated air to oxygen is not one that resembles interpretation. How could it do so in the absence of fixed data for the scientist to interpret? Rather than being an interpreter, the scientist who embraces a new paradigm is like the man wearing inverting lenses. Confronting the same constellation of objects as before and knowing that he does so, he nevertheless finds them transformed through and through in many of their details.

What are the crucial questions that Kuhn says a scientific community needs to answer, pass on effectively to its students, and even defend in the face of "fundamental novelties"?

Effective research scarcely begins before a scientific community thinks it has acquired firm answers to questions like the following: What are the fundamental entities of which the universe is composed? How do these interact with each other and with the senses? What questions may legitimately be asked about such entities and what techniques employed in seeking solutions?

The fifth myth deals with the often heard "it's only a theory." What does it mean to say something is a scientific theory? In particular, what is Goodstein's opinion of recent court decisions about evolution?

For something to be a scientific theory is to say it will be proved wrong according to the ideas of Kuhn and Popper. This is not what all of science is. Science at the frontier may be like this but the majority is not. Textbook science is not. Goldstein doesn't view evolution as a theory. He believes it to be textbook science and should thus be taught in schools.

What example did Kuhn give to support Bacon's dictum: "Truth emerges more readily from error than from confusion"?

Freed from the concern with any and all electrical phenomena, the united group of electricians could pursue selected phenomena in far more detail, designing much special equipment for the task and employing it more stubbornly and systematically than electricians had ever done before. Both fact collection and theory articulation became highly directed activities. The effectiveness and efficiency of electrical research increased accordingly, providing evidence for a societal version of Francis Bacon's acute methodological dictum: "Truth emerges more readily from error than from confusion."10

Name the two Elizabethan-era scientists that are mentioned as working at the University of Padua, near Venice. In what area of science did each of them work? What significant contribution to modern science did each make?

Galileo Galilei: used a telescope to make observations about the stars, and lead to his significant contribution of the Earth revolving around the sun and not the other way around. William Harvey: dissected cadavers, which was illegal at the time, but lead to his significant contribution of blood circulating

Why, according to Kuhn, do students believe what is in textbooks? How would science textbooks be different if they were really about giving evidence for their claims?

Given the slightest reason for doing so, the man who reads a science text can easily take the applications to be the evidence for the theory, the reasons why it ought to be believed. But science students accept theories on the authority of teacher and text, not because of evidence. What alternatives have they, or what competence? The applications given in texts are not there as evidence but because learning them is part of learning the paradigm at the base of current practice. If applications were set forth as evidence, then the very failure of texts to suggest alternative interpretations or to discuss problems for which scientists have failed to produce paradigm solutions would convict their authors of extreme bias. There is not the slightest reason for such an indictment.

Why was Newton's treatment of gravity as an innate quality a problem in his own time? How was the problem 'resolved' and what effects did the resolution have later?

Gravity, interpreted as an innate attraction between every pair of particles of matter, was an occult quality in the same sense as the scholastics' "tendency to fall" had been. Therefore, while the standards of corpuscularism remained in effect, the search for a mechanical explanation of gravity was one of the most challenging problems for those who accepted the Principia as paradigm. Newton devoted much attention to it and so did many of his eighteenth-century successors. The only apparent option was to reject Newton's theory for its failure to explain gravity, and that alternative, too, was widely adopted. Yet neither of these views ultimately triumphed. Unable either to practice science without the Principia or to make that work conform to the corpuscular standards of the seventeenth century, scientists gradually accepted the view that gravity was indeed innate. By the mideighteenth century that interpretation had been almost universally accepted, and the result was a genuine reversion (which is not the same as a retrogression) to a scholastic standard. Innate attractions and repulsions joined size, shape, position, and motion as physically irreducible primary properties of matter.

Describe Augustine's view of the "classical sciences."

He did not fear the "classical sciences" or promote them. Knowledge for the sake of knowing is without value. Understood some knowlege as nexessary for life. All truth is God's truth. Use this science as a tool for Christian philosophy and theology.

Explain what the writer measn by his use of "classical sciences" and why he has to explain the term.

He means sciences that descended from the Greek and Roman classical tradition. He wants to clarify that these are the ingredients of what would develop into modern science and are what must be investiaged if interested in the origins of western science.

Why does Kuhn think that cumulative acquisition of novelty [which most people think is the essence of science] is 1) rare in fact and 2) improbable in principle?

If, however, resistant facts can carry us that far, then a second look at the ground we have already covered may suggest that cumulative acquisition of novelty is not only rare in fact but improbable in principle. Normal research, which is cumulative, owes its success to the ability of scientists regularly to select problems that can be solved with conceptual and instrumental techniques close to those already in existence. (That is why an excessive concern with useful problems, regardless of their relation to existing knowledge and technique, can so easily inhibit scientific development.) The man who is striving to solve a problem defined by existing knowledge and technique is not, however, just looking around. He knows what he wants to achieve, and he designs his instruments and directs his thoughts accordingly. Unanticipated novelty, the new discovery, can emerge only to the extent that his anticipations about nature and his instruments prove wrong. Often the importance of the resulting discovery will itself be proportional to the extent and stubbornness of the anomaly that foreshadowed it. Obviously, then, there must be a conflict between the paradigm that discloses anomaly and the one that later renders the anomaly lawlike. The examples of discovery through paradigm destruction examined in Section VI did not confront us with mere historical accident. There is no other effective way in which discoveries might be generated. There are, in principle, only three types of phenomena about which a new theory might be developed. The first consists of phenomena already well explained by existing paradigms, and these seldom provide either motive or point of departure for theory construction. When they do, as with the three famous anticipations discussed at the end of Section VII, the theories that result are seldom accepted, because nature provides no ground for discrimination. A second class of phenomena consists of those whose nature is indicated by existing paradigms but whose details can be understood only through further theory articulation. These are the phenomena to which scientists direct their research much of the time, but that research aims at the articulation of existing paradigms rather than at the invention of new ones. Only when these attempts at articulation fail do scientists encounter the third type of phenomena, the recognized anomalies whose characteristic feature is their stubborn refusal to be assimilated to existing paradigms. This type alone gives rise to new theories. Paradigms provide all phenomena except anomalies with a theory-determined place in the scientist's field of vision.

What is Kuhn's explicit definition of scientific revolutions at the beginning of this chapter

In particular, the preceding discussion has indicated that scientific revolutions are here taken to be those non-cumulative developmental episodes in which an older paradigm is replaced in whole or in part by an incompatible new one. In much the same way, scientific revolutions are inaugurated by a growing sense, again often restricted to a narrow subdivision of the scientific community, that an existing paradigm has ceased to function adequately in the exploration of an aspect of nature to which that paradigm itself had previously led the way. Like the choice between competing political institutions, that between competing paradigms proves to be a choice between incompatible modes of community life. Because it has that character, the choice is not and cannot be determined merely by the evaluative procedures characteristic of normal science, for these depend in part upon a particular paradigm, and that paradigm is at issue. When paradigms enter, as they must, into a debate about paradigm choice, their role is necessarily circular. Each group uses its own paradigm to argue in that paradigm's defense

Noting again the fact that even gifted scientists cannot always make the shift to a new paradigm, Kuhn rejects the notion that it is simply that they are too proud to admit their errors, even when confronted with strict proof. What is his reasoning on this point?

In the past they have most often been taken to indicate that scientists, being only human, cannot always admit their errors, even when confronted with strict proof. I would argue, rather, that in these matters neither proof nor error is at issue. The transfer of allegiance from paradigm to paradigm is a conversion experience that cannot be forced. Lifelong resistance, particularly from those whose productive careers have committed them to an older tradition of normal science, is not a violation of scientific standards but an index to the nature of scientific research itself. The source of resistance is the assurance that the older paradigm will ultimately solve all its problems, that nature can be shoved into the box the paradigm provides. Inevitably, at times of revolution, that assurance seems stubborn and pigheaded as indeed it sometimes becomes. But it is also something more. That same assurance is what makes normal or puzzle-solving science possible. And it is only through normal science that the professional community of scientists succeeds, first, in exploiting the potential scope and precision of the older paradigm and, then, in isolating the difficulty through the study of which a new paradigm may emerge.

Why is it that a scientist who has given up the Ptolemaic theory and accepted Copernicanism would not say, "I used to see a planet, but now I see a satellite"?

In the sciences, therefore, if perceptual switches ac company paradigm changes, we may not expect scientists to attest to these changes directly. Looking at the moon, the convert to Copernicanism does not say, "I used to see a planet, but now I see a satellite." That locution would imply a sense in which the Ptolemaic system had once been correct. Instead, a convert to the new astronomy says, "I once took the moon to be (or saw the moon as) a planet, but I was mistaken." That sort of statement does recur in the aftermath of scientific revolutions. If it ordinarily disguises a shift of scientific vision or some other mental transformation with the same effect, we may not expect direct testimony about that shift. Rather we must look for indirect and behavioral evidence that the scientist with a new paradigm sees differently from the way he had seen before.

Explain the quote: "The scientist who pauses to examine every anomaly he notes will seldom get significant work done."

It follows that if an anomaly is to evoke crisis, it must usually be more than just an anomaly. There are always difficulties somewhere in the paradigm-nature fit; most of them are set right sooner or later, often by processes that could not have been foreseen. The scientist who pauses to examine every anomaly he notes will seldom get significant work done. Very often scientists are willing to wait, particularly if there are many problems available in other parts of the field. We have already noted, for example, that during the sixty years after Newton's original computation, the predicted motion of the moon's perigee remained only half of that observed. As Europe's best mathematical physicists continued to wrestle unsuccessfully with the well-known discrepancy, there were occasional proposals for a modification of Newton's inverse square law. But no one took these proposals very seriously, and in practice this patience with a major anomaly proved justified. Clairaut in 1750 was able to show that only the mathematics of the application had been wrong and that Newtonian theory could stand as before.

What does Karl Popper believe is the duty of every true scientist? What is the key flaw in his thinking?

Karl Popper believes that it is the duty of scientists to try to prove theories wrong. All theories can be disproved if a falsity is found.

What are two criticisms of Kuhn that this author makes? In your view, which criticism is more significant, and why?

Kuhn does not offer any measurement for how big a shift must be for it to be considered a new paradigm. This is more significant, because you can't have a paradigm shift if you don't know it's a paradigm.

The author uses as an example the way that the orbits of the outer planets deviated from Newtonian predictions, leading to the discovery of Pluto. How would this "event" be described by Kuhn? How does it expose the flaw of Popper?

Kuhn: It would be a continuation of a paradigm. The paradigm prevailed and held true. Popper: It shows a flaw in Popper because according to Popper the Newtonian predictions should have been thrown out at the first flaw. The theory proved true anyway.

Explain what is meant by the "principle of least astonishment." Why is it a critical aspect of inductive reasoning in science? How does it influence the choice of conclusions when several possible conclusions exist?

Least astonishment is a mechanism for selecting the most probably conclusion from among a number of competing options on the basis of minimum surprise. Allows the accepting of the best available conclusions available. Since you're making a generalization it needs to make sense. Collective wisdom used to determine the conclusion.

Judgment or Intuition

Less well defined forms of thinking in which a general judgment is made. Sometimes by gathering in a lot of different impressions and making a gestalt judgment which cannot afterwards be completely justified or analyzed. Often the most complex cases of Reasoning to the Best Explanation are examples of Intuition.

What does Kuhn mean by saying that "Mopping-up operations are what engage most scientists throughout their careers"?

Mop-ping-up operations are what engage most scientists throughout their careers. They constitute what I am here calling normal science. Closely examined, whether historically or in the contemporary laboratory, that enterprise seems an attempt to force nature into the preformed and relatively inflexible box that the paradigm supplies. No part of the aim of normal science is to call forth new sorts of phenomena; indeed those that will not fit the box are often not seen at all. Nor do scientists normally aim to invent new theories, and they are often intolerant of those invented by others.1 Instead, normal-scientific research is directed to the articulation of those phenomena and theories that the paradigm already supplies.

Kuhn describes normal science with phrases like "received beliefs," "existing traditions of scientific practice," "historically conditioned," and even "tradition-bound." In your opinion, what cultural beliefs and hopes might make these descriptions sound odd to us?

My concept of tradition entails a longer time span than what Kuhn refers to. These "received beliefs" in my view of time are quite recent. For example, the overall acceptance of what constitutes a planet changed in 2006 highlighted by the reclassifying of Pluto as a dwarf planet. I can agree with this example now being known as a received belief, it is taught in textbooks and schools to the next generation, but I disagree with the idea of it being "historically conditioned" or "tradition-bound." From my viewpoint for something to fall into the previous two categories it must survive a much greater span of time and thought. I consider my Christian beliefs to be "tradition-bound" for example. With that in mind, it is incompatible for me to view the redefinition of a planet in the same way even though Pluto is still my favorite planet.

Myths one, three and four in Goodstein's discussion relate to Popper's claim that the true scientist is always working to falsify her own theories. Taken together, what picture does Goodstein paint of how science actually works?

Myth 1 is that scientists must have open minds and be ready to discard old ideas in favor of new ones. Reality 1 is that since is an adversarial process it is better scientists to cling to their own older ideas even in the face of conflicting evidence. Myth 2 is that scientific peer reviewing assures all papers are sound and dependable Reality 2 is that scientific peer reviewing just makes sure all papers follow the paradigm Myth 4 is that when a new theory comes a long it is the duty of the scientist to falsify it Reality 4 is that when a new theory comes along a scientist's instinct is to verify it. A disproven theory is quickly forgotten along with the scientist who disproved it. Goldstein's view of science is that of science being difficult and not open. A scientist is poised to defend their views no matter the evidence. The idea of the scientific journals protecting science is not a reality, they assume the data to be accurate and only verify that it fits into the current paradigm.

Goodstein's second myth has to do with the requirement of repeatability. While he doesn't deny it, how is this a bit more complicated than is sometimes imagined?

Myth 3 is that science is an open book that allows everyone to repeat the science. Reality 3 is that science requires skill that can't be recreated by everyone.

List some of the most important scientific institutions in the US. How does the author describe their significance?

National Science Foundation (independent agency), National Institutes of Health (part of the Department of Health and Human Services), and parts of the Department of Energy and the Department of Defense. These do the funding. American Physical Society, American Chemical Society, and other such societies put out publications, advice the government, and elect their own members. These Organizations form the competition scientists participate in.

Describe Newton's view about alchemy.

Newton and some of his most illustrious contemporaries, Boyle and Locke, saw it as a very serious part of chemistry that held great promise for understanding the universe. Offered room for free divine activity. Forces and powers manifested in chemical phenomena bore witness to the mediated activity of the creator.

Describe Newton's view about the cosmic force of gravitation. Include a description of the conversation between Leibniz and Newton about clocks.

Newton came to view God the Father as the direct and immediate casuse of gravitation. Omnipresent God, in whom we live and move and have our being, moves matter through space. Leibniz suggested to Newton that a God needing to make adjustments to his "clock" lacked skill. Newton rejected the idea of clock as the world going on like a machiene. That excludes God's providence and government in our reality.

What was the state of the science of optics before Newton, or the science of electricity before Franklin?

No period between remote antiquity and the end of the seventeenth century exhibited a single generally accepted view about the nature of light. Instead there were a number of competing schools and sub-schools, most of them espousing one variant or another of Epicurean, Aristotelian, or Platonic theory. One group took light to be particles emanating from material bodies; for another it was a modification of the medium that intervened between tie body and the eye; still another explained light in terms of an interaction of the medium with an emanation from the eye; and there were other combinations and modifications besides. During that period there were almost as many views about the nature of electricity as there were important electrical experimenters, men like Hauksbee, Gray, Desaguliers, Du Fay, Nollett, Watson, Franklin, and others. All their numerous concepts of electricity had something in common—they were partially derived from one or another version of the mechanico-corpuscular philosophy that guided all scientific research of the day. One early group of theories, following seventeenth-century practice, regarded attraction and factional generation as the fundamental electrical phenomena. This group tended to treat repulsion as a secondary effect due to some sort of mechanical rebounding and also to postpone for as long as possible both discussion and systematic research on Gray's newly discovered effect, electrical conduction. Other "electricians" (the term is their own) took attraction and repulsion to be equally elementary manifestations of electricity and modified their theories and research accordingly. (Actually, this group is remarkably small—even Franklin's theory never quite accounted for the mutual repulsion of two negatively charged bodies.) But they had as much difficulty as the first group in accounting simultaneously for any but the simplest conduction effects. Those effects, however, provided the starting point for still a third group, one which tended to speak of electricity as a "fluid" that could run through conductors rather than as an "effluvium" that emanated from non-conductors. This group, in its turn, had difficulty reconciling its theory with a number of attractive and repulsive effects.

How does the history of the discovery of Uranus support Kuhn's claims?

On at least seventeen different occasions between 1690 and 1781, a number of astronomers, including several of Europe's most eminent observers, had seen a star in positions that we now suppose must have been occupied at the time by Uranus. One of the best observers in this group had actually seen the star on four successive nights in 1769 without noting the motion that could have suggested another identification. Herschel, when he first observed the same object twelve years later, did so with a much improved telescope of his own manufacture. As a result, he was able to notice an apparent disk-size that was at least unusual for stars. Something was awry, and he therefore postponed identification pending further scrutiny. That scrutiny disclosed Uranus' motion among the stars, and Herschel therefore announced that he had seen a new comet! Only several months later, after fruitless attempts to fit the observed motion to a cometary orbit, did Lexell suggest that the orbit was probably planetary.4 When that suggestion was accepted, there were several fewer stars and one more planet in the world of the professional astronomer. A celestial body that had been observed off and on for almost a century was seen differently after 1781 because, like an anomalous playing card, it could no longer be fitted to the perceptual categories (star or comet) provided by the paradigm that had previously prevailed. The shift of vision that enabled astronomers to see Uranus, the planet, does not, however, seem to have affected only the perception of that previously observed object. Its consequences were more farreaching. Probably, though the evidence is equivocal, the minor paradigm change forced by Herschel helped to prepare astronomers for the rapid discovery, after 1801, of the numerous minor planets or asteroids. Because of their small size, these did not display the anomalous magnification that had alerted Herschel. Nevertheless, astronomers prepared to find additional planets were able, with standard instruments, to identify twenty of them in the first fifty years of the nineteenth century.5

Kuhn says that the object of normal science is not, as some expect, a process of testing. Instead, its real purpose in each specific case is "to solve a puzzle for whose very existence the validity of the paradigm must be assumed." Explain.

On the contrary, what we previously called the puzzles that constitute normal science exist only because no paradigm that provides a basis for scientific research ever completely resolves all its problems. Excepting those that are exclusively instrumental, every problem that normal science sees as a puzzle can be seen, from another viewpoint, as a counterinstance and thus as a source of crisis. Instead, its object is to solve a puzzle for whose very existence the validity of the paradigm must be assumed. Failure to achieve a solution discredits only the scientist and not the theory. Here, even more than above, the proverb applies: "It is a poor carpenter who blames his tools."

Covenantal Monotheism

One God is known in the covenants with humans such as Abraham or the people of Israel. God can be understood partially by His behavior as a covenant partner.

What was misleading about the way that Newton interpreted Galileo's work on falling objects?

Or again, Newton wrote that Galileo had discovered that the constant force of gravity produces a motion proportional to the square of the time. In fact, Galileo's kinematic theorem does take that form when embedded in the matrix of Newton's own dynamical concepts. But Galileo said nothing of the sort. His discussion of falling bodies rarely alludes to forces, much less to a uniform gravitational force that causes bodies to fall.2 By crediting to Galileo the answer to a question that Galileo's paradigms did not permit to be asked, Newton's account hides the effect of a small but revolutionary reformulation in the questions that scientists asked about motion as well as in the answers they felt able to accept. But it is just this sort of change in the formulation of questions and answers that accounts, far more than novel empirical discoveries, for the transition from Aristotelian to Galilean and from Galilean to Newtonian dynamics. By disguising such changes, the textbook tendency to make the development of science linear hides a process that lies at the heart of the most significant episodes of scientific development. The preceding examples display, each within the context of a single revolution, the beginnings of a reconstruction of history that is regularly completed by post-revolutionary science texts. But in that completion more is involved than a multiplication of the historical misconstructions illustrated above. Those misconstructions render revolutions invisible; the arrangement of the still visible material in science texts implies a process that, if it existed, would deny revolutions a function. Because they aim quickly to acquaint the student with what the contemporary scientific community thinks it knows, textbooks treat the various experiments, concepts, laws, and theories of the current normal science as separately and as nearly seriatim as possible. As pedagogy this technique of presentation is unexceptionable. But when combined with the generally unhistorical air of science writing and with the occasional systematic misconstructions discussed above, one strong impression is overwhelmingly likely to follow: science has reached its present state by a series of individual discoveries and inventions that, when gathered together, constitute the modern body of technical knowledge. From the beginning of the scientific enterprise, a textbook presentation implies, scientists have striven for the particular objectives that are embodied in today's paradigms. One by one, in a process often compared to the addition of bricks to a building, scientists have added another fact, concept, law, or theory to the body of information supplied in the contemporary science text.

How do we expect scientists to respond to counterinstances to an established normal-science tradition, and how do they actually respond?

Part of the answer, as obvious as it is important, can be discovered by noting first what scientists never do when confronted by even severe and prolonged anomalies. Though they may begin to lose faith and then to consider alternatives, they do not renounce the paradigm that has led them into crisis. They do not, that is, treat anomalies as counter-instances, though in the vocabulary of philosophy of science that is what they are. But it does mean—what will ultimately be a central point—that the act of judgment that leads scientists to reject a previously accepted theory is always based upon more than a comparison of that theory with the world. The decision to reject one paradigm is always simultaneously the decision to accept another, and the judgment leading to that decision involves the comparison of both paradigms with nature and with each other.

What does Kuhn see as the major problem of the falsification theory of Popper?

Popper who denies the existence of any verification procedures at all.2 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. Indeed, I doubt that the latter exist. As has repeatedly been emphasized before, no theory ever solves all the puzzles with which it is confronted at a given time; nor are the solutions already achieved often perfect. On the contrary, it is just the incompleteness and imperfection of the existing data-theory fit that, at any time, define many of the puzzles that characterize normal science. If any and every failure to fit were ground for theory rejection, all theories ought to be rejected at all times. On the other hand, if only severe failure to fit justifies theory rejection, then the Popperians will require some criterion of "improbability" or of "degree of falsification." In developing one they will almost certainly encounter the same network of difficulties that has haunted the advocates of the various probabilistic verification theories.

What is the traditional concept of scientific development that Kuhn is criticizing, and what were the two main tasks of a historian of science operating with the traditional concept?

Science development is the piecemeal process by which these items have been added, singly and in combination, to the ever growing stockpile that constitutes scientific technique and knowledge. 1.The more carefully they study, say, Aristotelian dynamics, phlogistic chemistry, or caloric thermodynamics, the more certain they feel that those once current views of nature were, as a whole, neither less scientific nor more the product of human myths, then myths can be produced by teh sae sorts of methods and held for the same sorts of reasons that now lead to scientific knowledge. 2.1. If, on the other hand, they are to be called science, then science has included bodies of belief quite incompatible with the ones we hold today. Given these alternatives, the historian must choose the latter.

Harrington states that "science is the progressive discovery of nature." How is the "discovery of nature" different than the "search for truth?" Why does a scientist strive for an understanding of reality rather than searching for absolute truth?

Science is tasked to discover nature instead of disputing its existence. Scientists understand reality by a continual progression of discoveries. Science is open to contradictions. Searching for the truth is not the point of science. Science does not stop.

How does this author seek to describe modern science as an amalgam of Bacon, Popper, and Kuhn? What does he believe needs to be added to this mix?

Scientists are Bacon like when it comes to reporting their data and observations. They act Popper like towards other scientists' theories. There are moments of change in perspective in science but it does not self-destruct. The idea of adversity is in science. The attacking and defending of theories.

How did the three ealy Christian writers, Tertullian, Tatian, and Basil, view the classical sciences? Why does Lindberg assert that these writers were not opposed to the "enterprise of philosophy"?

Tertuallian: expressed hostility towards sciences with faith that are not needed. But used the tradition of Greco-Roman philosophy tradition for his arguments. Tatian: Pursuit of sciences worthless, nothing noble gained from them Basil: viewed sciences as a distraction from the truth. Used it to get their point across.

What are Kuhn's main reasons for his claim that science textbooks have to be re-written after each scientific revolution, and once rewritten: "they inevitably disguise not only the role but the very existence of the revolution that produced them"?

Textbooks, however, being pedagogic vehicles for the perpetuation of normal science, have to be rewritten in whole or in part whenever the language, problem-structure, or standards of normal science change. In short, they have to be rewritten in the aftermath of each scientific revolution, and, once rewritten, they inevitably disguise not only the role but the very existence of the revolutions that produced them. Unless he has personally experienced a revolution in his own lifetime, the historical sense either of the working scientist or of the lay reader of textbook literature extends only to the outcome of the most recent revolutions in the field. Characteristically, textbooks of science contain just a bit of history, either in an introductory chapter or, more often, in scattered references to the great heroes of an earlier age. From such references both students and professionals come to feel like participants in a long-standing historical tradition. Yet the textbook-derived tradition in which scientists come to sense their participation is one that, in fact, never existed. For reasons that are both obvious and highly functional, science textbooks (and too many of the older histories of science) refer only to that part of the work of past scientists that can easily be viewed as contributions to the statement and solution of the texts' paradigm problems. Partly by selection and partly by distortion, the scientists of earlier ages are implicitly represented as having worked upon the same set of fixed problems and in accordance with the same set of fixed canons that the most recent revolution in scientific theory and method has made seem scientific. No wonder that textbooks ' and the historical tradition they imply have to be rewritten after each scientific revolution. And no wonder that, as they are rewritten, science once again comes to seem largely cumulative. Scientists are not, of course, the only group that tends to see its discipline's past developing linearly toward its present vantage. The temptation to write history backward is both omnipresent and perennial. But scientists are more affected by the temptation to rewrite history, partly because the results of scientific research show no obvious dependence upon the historical context of the inquiry, and partly because, except during crisis and revolution, the scientist's contemporary position seems so secure. More historical detail, whether of science's present or of its past, or more responsibility to the historical details that are presented, could only give artificial status to human idiosyncrasy, error, and confusion. Why dignify what science's best and most persistent efforts have made it possible to discard? The depreciation of historical fact is deeply, and probably functionally, ingrained in the ideology of the scientific profession, the same profession that places the highest of all values upon factual details of other sorts. Whitehead caught the unhistorical spirit of the scientific community when he wrote, "A science that hesitates to forget its founders is lost." Yet he was not quite right, for the sciences, like other professional enterprises, do need their heroes and do preserve their names. Fortunately, instead of forgetting these heroes, scientists have been able to forget or revise their works. The result is a persistent tendency to make the history of science look linear or cumulative, a tendency that even affects scientists looking back at their own research. For example, all three of Dalton's incompatible accounts of the development of his chemical atomism make it appear that he was interested from an early date in just those chemical problems of combining proportions that he was later famous for having solved. Actually those problems seem only to have occurred to him with their solutions, and then not until his own creative work was very nearly complete.1 What all of Dalton's accounts omit are the revolutionary effects of applying to chemistry a set of questions and concepts previously restricted to physics and meteorology. That is what Dalton did, and the result was a reorientation toward the field, a reorientation that taught chemists to ask new questions about and to draw new conclusions from old data.

What reasons does Kuhn give for fact that scientists working in competing paradigms tend to talk past each other?

That observation returns us to the point from which this section began, for it provides our first explicit indication of why the choice between competing paradigms regularly raises questions that cannot be resolved by the criteria of normal science. To the extent, as significant as it is incomplete, that two scientific schools disagree about what is a problem and what a solution, they will inevitably talk through each other when debating the relative merits of their respective paradigms. In the partially circular arguments that regularly result, each paradigm will be shown to satisfy more or less the criteria that it dictates for itself and to fall short of a few of those dictated by its opponent. There are other reasons, too, for the incompleteness of logical contact that consistently characterizes paradigm debates. For example, since no paradigm ever solves all the problems it defines and since no two paradigms leave all the same problems unsolved, paradigm debates always involve the question: Which problems is it more significant to have solved? Like the issue of competing standards, that question of values can be answered only in terms of criteria that lie outside of normal science altogether, and it is that recourse to external criteria that most obviously makes paradigm debates revolutionary. Something even more fundamental than standards and values is, however, also at stake. I have so far argued only that paradigms are constitutive of science. Now I wish to display a sense in which they are constitutive of nature as well.

Deism

The God of monotheism exists and is clearly seen in the beauty of natural order and in the moral law in the human heart. It is an insult to God's intelligence to think that He would need to intervene in the world by doing miracles or answering prayers - everything already works such as He planned for it to. It is unnecessary for such a God to send special messengers to reveal His will to us - every human being can learn all they need to know about God from the order of nature and the moral law within.

How does the author describe the career path of academic science?

The career path of a scientist is based on a reward and authority system. The reward system offers fame, glory and immortality. The authority system is of influence and power. Reward System: 1. Get a PhD 2. Be a post-doctoral fellow for one or two stints 3. Appointment to a tenure track junior faculty position at a university 4. Grow renown in science beyond your circle of acquaintances 5. Full professorship 6. Various rewards given out by scientific societies 7. Election to National Academy of Sciences 8. Noble Prize 9. Immortality As you work through the ladder of the reward system you can step sideways such as becoming a contract officer in a funding agency. From here you have stepped from the rewards and now have influence over who moves up.

Agnosticism

The claim that one does not know whether or not God exists. Weak form - there may or may not be good evidence for or against the existence of God, but it is unknown, so I cannot current claim to know whether God exists or not. Strong form - belief that there is no good evidence for the existence of God, so no one knows whether or not God exists.

Explain Kuhn's claim: "The competition between paradigm's is not the sort of battle that can be resolved by proofs."

The competition between paradigms is not the sort of battle that can be resolved by proofs. We have already seen several reasons why the proponents of competing paradigms must fail to make complete contact with each other's viewpoints. Collectively these reasons have been described as the incommensurability of the pre- and postrevolutionary normal-scientific traditions, and we need only recapitulate them briefly here. In the first place, the proponents of competing paradigms will often disagree about the list of problems that any candidate for paradigm must resolve. Their standards or their definitions of science are not the same. Must a theory of motion explain the cause of the attractive forces between particles of matter or may it simply note the existence of such forces? Newton's dynamics was widely rejected because, unlike both Aristotle's and Descartes's theories, it implied the latter answer to the question. When Newton's theory had been accepted, a question was therefore banished from science. That question, however, was one that general relativity may proudly claim to have solved. Or again, as disseminated in the nineteenth century, Lavoisier's chemical theory inhibited chemists chemical substances have entered science again, together with some answers to them. from asking why the metals were so much alike, a question that phlogistic chemistry had both asked and answered. The transition to Lavoisier's paradigm had, like the transition to Newton's, meant a loss not only of a permissible question but of an achieved solution. That loss was not, however, permanent either. In the twentieth century questions about the qualities of chemical substances have entered science again, together with some answers to them. More is involved, however, than the incommensurability of standards. Since new paradigms are born from old ones, they ordinarily incorporate much of the vocabulary and apparatus, both conceptual and manipulative, that the traditional paradigm had previously employed. But they seldom employ these borrowed elements in quite the traditional way. Within the new paradigm, old terms, concepts, and experiments fall into new relationships one with the other. The inevitable result is what we must call, though the term is not quite right, a misunderstanding between the two competing schools. The laymen who scoffed at Einstein's general theory of relativity because space could not be "curved"—it was not that sort of thing—were not simply wrong or mistaken. Nor were the mathematicians, physicists, and philosophers who tried to develop a Euclidean version of Einstein's theory.3 What had previously been meant by space was necessarily flat, homogeneous, isotropic, and unaffected by the presence of matter. If it had not been, Newtonian physics would not have worked. To make the transition to Einstein's universe, the whole conceptual web whose strands are space, time, matter, force, and so on, had to be shifted and laid down again on nature whole. Only men who had together undergone or failed to undergo that transformation would be able to discover precisely what they agreed or disagreed about. Communication across the revolutionary divide is inevitably partial. Consider, for another example, the men who called Copernicus mad because he proclaimed that the earth moved. They were not either just wrong or quite wrong. Part of what they meant by 'earth' was fixed position. Their earth, at least, could not be moved. Correspondingly, Copernicus' innovation was not simply to move the earth. Rather, it was a whole new way of regarding the problems of physics and astronomy, one that necessarily changed the meaning of both 'earth' and 'motion.'4 Without those changes the concept of a moving earth was mad. On the other hand, once they had been made and understood, both Descartes and Huyghens could realize that the earth's motion was a question with no content for science.5 These examples point to the third and most fundamental aspect of the incommensurability of competing paradigms. In a sense that I am unable to explicate further, the proponents of competing paradigms practice their trades in different worlds. One contains constrained bodies that fall slowly, the other pendulums that repeat their motions again and again. In one, solutions are compounds, in the other mixtures. One is embedded in a flat, the other in a curved, matrix of space. Practicing in different worlds, the two groups of scientists see different things when they look from the same point in the same direction. Again, that is not to say that they can see anything they please. Both are looking at the world, and what they look at has not changed. But in some areas they see different things, and they see them in different relations one to the other. That is why a law that cannot even be demonstrated to one group of scientists may occasionally seem intuitively obvious to another. Equally, it is why, before they can hope to communicate fully, one group or the other must experience the conversion that we have been calling a paradigm shift. Just because it is a transition between incommensurables, the transition between competing paradigms cannot be made a step at a time, forced by logic and neutral experience. Like the gestalt switch, it must occur all at once (though not necessarily in an instant) or not at all.

What are Kuhn's four reasons for saying that paradigms do in fact determine normal science without having to be interpreted into fully rational rules? Explain each.

The first, which has already been discussed quite fully, is the severe difficulty of discovering the rules that have guided particular normal-scientific traditions. That difficulty is very nearly the same as the one the philosopher encounters when he tries to say what all games have in common. The second, to which the first is really a corollary, is rooted in the nature of scientific education. Scientists, it should already be clear, never learn concepts, laws, and theories in the abstract and by themselves. Instead, these intellectual tools are from the start encountered in a historically and pedagogically prior unit that displays them with and through their applications. These consequences of scientific education have a converse that provides a third reason to suppose that paradigms guide research by direct modeling as well as through abstracted rules. Normal science can proceed without rules only so long as the relevant scientific community accepts without question the particular problem-solutions already achieved. Rules should therefore become important and the characteristic unconcern about them should vanish whenever paradigms or models are felt to be insecure.

Describe the way that scientists belonging to competing paradigms can and cannot argue with each other.

The man who premises a paradigm when arguing in its defense can nonetheless provide a clear exhibit of what scientific practice will be like for those who adopt the new view of nature. That exhibit can be immensely persuasive, often compellingly so. Yet, whatever its force, the status of the circular argument is only that of persuasion. It cannot be made logically or even probabilistically compelling for those who refuse to step into the circle.

Briefly describe the myth 1 and what actually occurred.

The myth is that early Christianity was a haven of anti-intellectualism, antiscientific sentiment, and one of the primary agents for Europe's descent into the "Dark Ages." Besides Tertullian early Christianity viewed science as something to be used to help the study of the Bible. This is seen in Augustine's writing.

Describe the myth of Issac Newton being a deist and the author's response.

The myth of Newton's deism is based on the clockwork universe theory. After God created, made the clock, he left it to tick on its own. The author argues this by evidencing Newton's study of alchemy and theology. As well as his direct rejection to the theory when questioned by Gottfried Leibniz.

Philosophical Monotheism

The natural drive for unity and simplicity of explanation, coupled with the natural sense that mind is superior to matter makes the idea of one absolute God philosophically attractive. This is expressed in the philosophical need for an unmoved mover or uncreated creator or undersigned designer or the supreme goodness from which every lower kind of goodness is a limited derivation.

Discuss the ways in which paradigms tell us what experiments are going to be most revealing, and in some cases, literally what features of an object to "see".

The operations and measurements that a scientist undertakes in the laboratory are not "the given" of experience but rather "the collected with difficulty." They are not what the scientist sees—at least not before his research is well advanced and his attention focused. Rather, they are concrete indices to the content of more elementary perceptions, and as such they are selected for the close scrutiny of normal research only because they promise opportunity for the fruitful elaboration of an accepted paradigm. Far more clearly than the immediate experience from which they in part derive, operations and measurements are paradigm-determined. Science does not deal in all possible laboratory manipulations. Instead, it selects those relevant to the juxtaposition of a paradigm with the immediate experience that that paradigm has partially determined. As a result, scientists with different paradigms engage in different concrete laboratory manipulations. The measurements to be performed on a pendulum are not the ones relevant to a case of constrained fall. Nor are the operations relevant for the elucidation of oxygen's properties uniformly the same as those required when investigating the characteristics of dephlogisticated air.

What two scientific "revolutions" does this author think formed the basis of Kuhn's view? Explain.

The original revolution of Copernicus and the accumulation of it in Newtonian revolutions. Before Copernicus the paradigm was that of Ancient Greece and after Newton everyone was a Newtonian. The revolution from Newtonian to quantum mechanics and Einstein theories of relativity. The change was faster (25 years) but just as profound as the first.

How are these difficulties changing how historians of science approach the science of the past?

The result of all these doubts and difficulties is a historiographic revolution in the study of science, though one that is still in its early stages. Gradually, and often without entirely realizing they are doing so, historians of science have begun to ask new sorts of questions and to trace different, and often less than cumulative, developmental lines for the sciences. Rather than seeking the permanent contributions of an older science to our present vantage, they attempt to display the historical integrity of that science in its own time. They ask, for example, not about the relation of Galileo's views to those of modern science, but rather about the relationship between his views and those of his group, i.e., his teachers, contemporaries, and immediate successors in the sciences. Furthermore, they insist upon studying the opinions of that group and other similar ones from the viewpoint—usually very different from that of modern science—that gives those opinions the maximum internal coherence and the closest possible fit to nature. Seen through the works that result, works perhaps best exemplified in the writings of Alexandre Koyré, science does not seem altogether the same enterprise as the one discussed by writers in the older historiographic tradition. By implication, at least, these historical studies suggest the possibility of a new image of science.

What roles does a paradigm play in education and research in some particular science?

The study of paradigms, including many that are far more specialized than those named illustratively above, is what mainly prepares the student for membership in the particular scientific community with which he will later practice. Because he there joins men who learned the bases of their field from the same concrete models, his subsequent practice will seldom evoke overt disagreement over fundamentals. Men whose research is based on shared paradigms are committed to the same rules and standards for scientific practice. That commitment and the apparent consensus it produces are prerequisites for normal science, i.e., for the genesis and continuation of a particular research tradition.

Naturalism or ontological naturalism:

The view that the universe contains only those entities, properties and processes which can be explained (in principle) by science. Thus, there are no god or spirits, nor are their non-natural properties such as goodness or beauty. A typical corollary is that to count as knowledge any claim must be derived from or reducible back to science (in principle). This view is sometimes call ontological naturalism, to distinguish it from the more modest methodological naturalism. It is essentially the effort to turn science, a knowledge creating activity, into a worldview.

Methodological naturalism:

The view that, whatever the actual nature of reality, science works best when we assume that the universe contains only those entities, properties and process which can be explained by science. Christians can consistently hold to the doctrine of methodological naturalism as long as they do not hold the doctrine of scientific omnicompetence.

What are the two characteristics of a paradigm, as Kuhn wants to use the term?

Their achievement was sufficiently unprecedented to attract an enduring group of adherents away from competing modes of scientific activity. Simultaneously, it was sufficiently open-ended to leave all sorts of problems for the redefined group of practitioners to resolve. Achievements that share these two characteristics I shall henceforth refer to as 'paradigms,' a term that relates closely to 'normal science.' By choosing it, I mean to suggest that some accepted examples of actual scientific practice—examples which include law, theory, application, and instrumentation together— provide models from which spring particular coherent traditions of scientific research.

What role does peer review play in modern science? What does it do well, and what does it do poorly?

There is also the process of peer review that plays a major role in science. Peer reviewing does less to find problems, data is taken to be factual and honest and the authors are fighting for the same things as the reviewers, but to weed out things that go against the main opinion (paradigm).

What is wrong, for Kuhn, with saying that theories gradually evolve to fit the facts that were there all along?

These questions are here asked about what appear as the piecemeal discovered facts of a textbook presentation. But obviously, they have implications as well for what the text presents as theories. Those theories, of course, do "fit the facts," but only by transforming previously accessible information into facts that, for the preceding paradigm, had not existed at all. And that means that theories too do not evolve piecemeal to fit facts that were there all the time. Rather, they emerge together with the facts they fit from a revolutionary reformulation of the preceding scientific tradition, a tradition within which the knowledge-mediated relationship between the scientist and nature was not quite the same.

Why does Kuhn think that work on the ordinary areas of normal science is the only way to find the extraordinary problems that may make "the scientific enterprise as a whole so particularly worthwhile"?

These three classes of problems—determination of significant fact, matching of facts with theory, and articulation of theory-exhaust, I think, the literature of normal science, both empirical and theoretical. They do not, of course, quite exhaust the entire literature of science. There are also extraordinary problems, and it may well be their resolution that makes the scientific enterprise as a whole so particularly worthwhile. But extraordinary problems are not to be had for the asking. They emerge only on special occasions prepared by the advance of normal research. Inevitably, therefore, the overwhelming majority of the problems undertaken by even the very best scientists usually fall into one of the three categories outlined above.

Reasoning to the Best Explanation (sometimes called Abduction)

This is a crucial form of Harrington's Principle of Least Astonishment. Taking several different pieces of evidence of different kinds and forming a theory as to what best accounts for all of them. Differs from induction in that induction is usually about similar cases, whereas the material of Reasoning to the Best Explanation can seem to have no connection until the explanation that ties them all together is discovered.

What does Kuhn mean by the claim that "scientific fact and theory are not categorically separable, except perhaps within a single tradition of normal science"? How does he support this idea?

Ultimately it has that effect, but not until the professional community has reevaluated traditional experimental procedures, altered its conception of entities with which it has long been familiar, and, in the process, shifted the network of theory through which it deals with the world. Scientific fact and theory are not categorically separable, except perhaps within a single tradition of normal-scientific practice. That is why the unexpected discovery is not simply factual in its import and why the scientist's world is qualitatively transformed as well as quantitatively enriched by fundamental novelties of either fact or theory

What is the difference between knowledge and understanding? Why does Harrington indicate that understanding requires a higher level of mental function than knowledge?

Understanding: knowing enough about something so that each part is seen in proper relationship to every part and the whole Knowledge: is acquaintance with fact Knowledge is first needed for understanding to happen. A person has to understand for him or her own self.

Why is that Kuhn feels that different opinions in science, especially in the early stages of a particular science, are not necessarily due to failures of method, or lack of proper observation or experience?

We shall note, for example, in Section II that the early developmental stages of most sciences have been characterized by continual competition between a number of distinct views of nature, each partially derived from, and all roughly compatible with, the dictates of scientific observation and method. What differentiated these various schools was not one or another failure of method— they were all "scientific"—but what we shall come to call their incommensurable ways of seeing the world and of practicing science in it. Incommensurable: not able to be judged by the same standard as something; having no common standard of measurement.

How does Kuhn use Wittgenstein's discussion of the concept of game to explain how scientists might be able to stay within the bounds of their particular normal science tradition without having a completely defined set of rules to guide them?

What can the phrase 'direct inspection of paradigms' mean? Partial answers to questions like these were developed by the late Ludwig Wittgenstein, though in a very different context. Wittgenstein, however, concluded that, given the way we use language and the sort of world to which we apply it, there need be no such set of characteristics. Though a discussion of some of the attributes shared by a number of games or chairs or leaves often helps us learn how to employ the corresponding term, there is no set of characteristics that is simultaneously applicable to all members of the class and to them alone. Instead, confronted with a previously unobserved activity, we apply the term 'game' because what we are seeing bears a close "family resemblance" to a number of the activities that we have previously learned to call by that name. For Wittgenstein, in short, games, and chairs, and leaves are natural families, each constituted by a network of overlapping and crisscross resemblances. The existence of such a network sufficiently accounts for our success in identifying the corresponding object or activity. Only if the families we named overlapped and merged gradually into one another—only, that is, if there were no natural families-would our success in identifying and naming provide evidence for a set of common characteristics corresponding to each of the class names we employ. Something of the same sort may very well hold for the various research problems and techniques that arise within a single normal scientific tradition. What these have in common is not that they satisfy some explicit or even some fully discoverable set of rules and assumptions that gives the tradition its character and its hold upon the scientific mind.

Instrumentalism

When scientific theories mention entities like electrons or viruses, these refer not to any unobserved reality, but only to the results of our observations and theorizing so far. We use terms like 'electron' to help us keep all our experimental results and expectations straight. A term like 'electron' if it refers to anything, refers to the whole summary of all our experiments and experiences thus far.