What is Good Science: Anomaly and the Emergence of Scientific Discoveries
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"Anomaly and the Emergence of Scientific Discoveries" (1970) is an Article by Thomas Samuel Kuhn that was published in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (ISBN 0608094293).
Contents |
Summary
VI. Anomaly and the Emergence of Scientific Discoveries
- normal science does not aim at novelties of fact or theory
- there is a distinction between novelty of fact and theory, although it turns out to be artificial
- so how does change come about then?
Discoveries, or novelties of fact
- discovery begins with an awareness of anomaly
- it continues with a steady and gradual emergence of factual and conceptual recognition, a kind of extended exploration of the concerned area of anomaly
- discovery closes with the adjustment or destruction of paradigm theories and procedures so that the respective anomaly becomes the expected (often accompanied by resistance in the academic field)
- since both observation and conceptualisation are inseparably linked in discovery, it is not a single simple act, but a process that takes time
- it is a complex event which entails the recognition both that something is and what it is
- paradigm procedures and applications are as necessary to science as paradigm laws and theories, and they have the same effects. Inevitably they restrict the phenomenological field accessible for scientific investigation at any given time
- anomaly appears only, or is only recognisable as the psychological experiment suggests, against the background provided by a certain paradigm (theory and procedure).
- the more precise and exact, the more rigid and restricted (and thus more resistant to paradigm-change) that paradigm is, the more sensitive an indicator it provides of anomaly and thus of a possibility for a paradigm change
- three examples:
- discovery of oxygen
- discovery of Röntgen’s X-rays
- discovery of the Leyden jar
VII. Crisis and the Emergence of Scientific Theories
- discoveries are not the only sources of destructive-constructive paradigm shifts
- the usually far larger changes result from novelties of theory
- if an awareness of anomaly plays a role in the emergence of novelties of fact, then an even more profound awareness is necessary to changes of theory
- the emergence of new theories needs a large-scale paradigm destruction and remarkable changes in the techniques and problems of normal science.
- therefore, the emergence of new theories is generally preceded by a period of pronounced professional security, or crisis.
- this insecurity is generated by the persistent failure of the puzzles of normal science to come out as they should
- interesting: the solution to a scientific problem is often, at least partially, anticipated during a pre-paradigm period when there is no apparent crisis, and in this absence of crisis, respective anticipations are ignored.
- three examples of paradigm change:
- emergence of Copernican astronomy
- emergence of Lavoisier’s oxygen theory of combustion
- emergence of the late-nineteenth century crisis in physics
Critique / Questions / Reflection / Comments
