The Philosophy Discussion Forum

bus2bondi wrote:hi coberst, i've been asking some of the same questions lately.

Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers.
--Voltaire (1694-1778)

Science—normal science—as Thomas Kuhn labels it in “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” moves forward in a “successive transition from one paradigm to another”. This isn't quite right. Normal science is what happens between paradigm shifts. The normal science period is characterised by consens...

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

Good-by Sunshine Recently I watched the documentary “Dimming Sun” that was played by Nova on PBS TV. This show described the nature of a problem in which the sunlight reaching the earth’s surface is being diminished by air pollution. A researcher from Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in 1985 di...

coberst, I enjoyed your post and agree in many ways, however... I view science as an inter-generational enterprise, employing human reason to understanding of something real - which would seem to stand at odds with Kuhn's concept of incommensurability. Even if, to cite Khun's example, Newton's and ...

‘Paradigm’ is a word that was given great meaning and clarity by Thomas Kuhn in his book “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions”. There is a famous essay by Margaret Masterman where she convincingly argues that there at least twenty different ways in which Kuhn uses the word paradigm! Margaret Ma...

Normal Science is Lamp-Post Science There is a popular joke that goes something like this: A drunken man is crawling around on his hands and knees under a lamp-post. His friend asks him “what are you doing crawling around under that lamp-post? The drunk responds that he has lost his keys and is look...

Coberst, I think most of us know that Science can't solve everything and not everything can be measured in scientific terms. Nevertheless, I think it is good to have the rigors of scientific procedures around to push us to devise the best possible methods, even though we know that the absolute answ...

Paradigm: A Criterion for Choosing Problems I graduated in 1959 as an electronics engineer. I had been taught how to use math to solve engineering problems. I was taught how to do math but never taught what math and science was really about. After reading Thomas Kuhn’s book “The Structure of Scienti...