Science retains a level of cold measurability as it relates to progress. There are exceptions. For my purposes here, I only refer to what is agreed upon within the scientific community. The more specialized one gets, the more arguments there will be as it relates to specifics of quantum physics, unified theory, genetics, etc. What the scientific community has provided is a model by which we can see a paradigm shift from one major set of ideas to a new one, followed by actual change.

This is also true of social change in that we have an accepted model, challenges and exceptions arise causing the model to be in crisis, the model is challenged outright, new perspectives solidify as consensus is formed, and at last real action and change results. Even with the best of intentions, social change comes slow and hard. Even those in total agreement have a hard time figuring out how the actual change should occur. What does the new model actually look like and how does it work? There is far more nuance to social change and I am more suited to speak of these changes by referencing the scientific models. Apologies in advance for taking the easy way out. You, the reader can apply this to social models as you will.

Science and technology march forward (absent catastrophe). Many define progress in the scientific community using various models. I tend to follow the model set by Thomas Kuhn. Central to this idea is the scientific paradigm. Kuhn’s notion of the paradigm as the world view through which scientists approach their work is paramount in understanding how scientific work is shaped and how change occurs. He also suggests that scientific progress is not directly due to the paradigm shift, but rather a bi-product of it. Kuhn’s structure does work better in some historic episodes than others but despite this, Kuhn’s central idea of the scientific paradigm is valid.

According to Kuhn, a paradigm is the worldview of a scientific community. It is the set of assumptions within which scientists perform normal science[1]. Practicing normal science permits progress by allowing scientists everywhere to start from a mutual understanding in which they don’t have to define their foundational assumptions. The language that is built for the scientists is already established through their years of education. The paradigm is given to them through their classes and textbooks and when the time comes that they are actually on their own and researching, the theory is simply known. Think of the act of speaking a language. A person speaking a language fluently does not usually stop to think about his or her sentence structure and take the time to pick words. The words and structure are already known and the person simply speaks. The practice of normal science, therefore, is science that uses the base assumptions and does not question them directly.

How does the scientific revolution occur, and therefore scientific progress? Kuhn explains:

1. A newly accepted paradigm seems to fit all current knowledge into its framework.
2. Questions that caused the previous paradigm to be challenged have been answered or reshaped the view of the scientists. The longer the current paradigm exists then the more refined the research becomes.
3. This refinement also leads to a less flexible and restrictive view of the paradigm[2].
4. Eventually, the paradigm can no longer explain some of the results obtained through research; these are anomalies.
5. There reaches a point when research is being done in which there are too many anomalies. That is to say, the scientists receive results that do not conform with the paradigm.
6. When anomalous results occur frequently enough a “crisis” occurs in which scientists begin to question the paradigm.
7. When someone comes up with a theory that seems to account for these anomalies, the paradigm may be adjusted or changed completely[3].

This process is what constitutes a scientific revolution—because a paradigm shift occurs.

This restructuring, however, does not account for progress. It does facilitate, though. The scientific revolution allows for new solutions to be created that could not possibly have existed using the previous paradigm. One very good example of this would be the switch from the Ptolemaic system of astrology to the Copernican. The Ptolemaic version did a good job for a long time of calculating the movements of the stars. It also currently still produces accurate navigational data when using these methods of calculation. The paradigm, despite its mathematical correctness, failed to be able to account for variable planetary positions and equinoxes[4]. Now the Copernican theory is not what accounts for the progress made in scientific knowledge. Scientists underwent what Kuhn likens to a gestalt shift. They were able to look at the stars and simply know that the Earth revolved around the Sun rather than the other way around. This change in perspective allowed for progress but was not the cause of it.

Calculations and research done under a new paradigm explain the anomalies of the previous paradigm. The anomalies are no longer anomalies but are now just normal pieces in the paradigm. The assumptions that are taken for granted have changed. Kuhn explains this by referencing a quote from H. Butterfield “handling the same bundle of data as before, but placing them in a new system of relations with one another by giving them a different framework”[5].

This paradigm shift in essence creates a new way to look at the scientific puzzle. It makes a new set of rules to play the game. The new rules do not allow for progress. The act of solving the puzzle is what constitutes progress. Kuhn mentions Lavoisier many times throughout his book and his significance in the discovery of oxygen. The discovery of oxygen and elimination of the imaginary element phlogiston was not progress. What was progress was everything that came from the understanding of oxygen and combustion afterward.

One might be able to argue that Kuhn’s belief that the shift does not constitute progress as philosophical nonsense or semantics, however, the argument is strong and logical. It is fairly easy to understand the idea that a perspective change is not actually progress but rather the things that come as a result of that change. This line of thinking is what validates Kuhn’s argument. There are historical episodes that time and time again show Kuhn’s model at work. For each of the episodes, we can see how they fit Kuhn’s idea of the paradigm. The more recent the episode occurs on the timeline though, the better it fits Kuhn’s model. This is because the more recent the episode in history, the closer the paradigms are to our current paradigms, and therefore our way of thinking. Science as we now know it is far closer to Lavoisier’s paradigm than the Greek paradigms. If it is the scientific revolution that relates more closely with our current paradigms, then certainly they would more closely relate to Kuhn’s way of thinking, and therefore his notion of the paradigm itself.

It could be argued that while the Greeks did create a paradigm, they did not necessarily experience the crisis the same way as the following episodes. The Greeks seemed to philosophize and merely set the foundations of the following revolutions. There were several different paradigms in Greek scientific thought but the one regarded as most important is simply the one that was used well after their time and long after the fall Roman Empire. This paradigm should be considered the first true one and while not resulting from the kind of Kuhnian crisis later paradigms, this paradigm is the first one to actually enter crisis, since there is arguably no true one before it. The paradigm I refer to is, of course, Aristotle’s.

Aristotle’s paradigm was so easily adapted to the medieval world view for many reasons. One could argue the sheer number of works that survived helped this, to include works that reference him, One could also argue that his affiliation with Alexander which helped his ideas spread and survive also helped. The main reason that his works survived though was because his philosophy was so easily adapted to Christianity.

In the middle ages, the most powerful political entity in Europe was the Christian Church and this reinforces Aristotle’s importance. Aristotle was of course not a Christian but many of his ideas were so nice of a fit with Christian dogma. Aristotle was very fixated on causation. He theorized that the thing that made the heavens continue to move, the final cause of everything if you will, is something called the “Unmoved Mover”. The “Unmoved Mover” can be explained as a thing “which is said to bring about movement as a final cause, as the good that is the object of desire and love”[6]. As explained in the lecture this “Unmoved Mover” is simply a perfect being that just is. It contemplates itself, and everything else in the universe in an attempt to become like the “Unmoved Mover”, moves as a result. From this, we can easily see how that thought can be adapted to a higher power or cause for everything. In the case of this argument, the higher power would be the Christian God. At any rate, the Church definitely did adapt Aristotle’s works to match their dogma and it is easy to see how that adaptation could be made in this case and many others. This fits into Kuhn’s definition of what a scientific paradigm is as it gives the thinkers of the time their particular world view and therefore, scientific assumptions.

The previously aforementioned Copernican revolution also meets the standards of Kuhn’s entire theory of scientific revolution. It also is the first to really challenge Greek scientific thought.  In Copernicus’ work On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, he essentially is refuting the ideas of Aristotle[7]. Copernicus began to see many contradictory things through observation that were contradictory to Aristotle’s paradigm. He saw that the Aristotelian view of rectilinear motion as the only “natural” motion was violated by a rotating Earth[8]. Copernicus also through reasoning saw that the motions of the heavens made more sense given the idea of Earth rotating around the sun. This idea more easily explained things like the yearly motions of the Sun. It also explained the retrograde motion of the planets. He also gives us the idea that perhaps the fixed stars are fixed because the Universe is immensely bigger than it was originally thought to be, perhaps infinitely[9].  He also through his works began to tackle issues such as why we cannot feel the motion of the Earth. To explain he may have given the world its first primary source of the explanation of relative motion in physics. He gives the example of how when one is on a ship the world seems to move past you while you stand still even though you know that you are in fact moving[10].  

Copernicus’ ideas, many of which are taken for granted now, did not take hold until long after his death. The paradigm he was challenging was Aristotle’s, and as mentioned previously, the church accepted Aristotle’s paradigm. Therefore, by challenging Aristotle, Copernicus was challenging the Church. The Copernican paradigm was not accepted or completed until long after his death. By challenging the existing paradigm, though, he created the spark of crisis and change, and others working under and adding to his observations created the next accept paradigm.

Another more recent aforementioned paradigm shift most closely follows the same model. Just like in the Copernican revolution, the chemical revolution challenged a long-standing and accepted paradigm.  The person primarily responsible for this fundamental change is the aforementioned Antoine Lavoisier. Lavoisier’s discoveries and methodology are the most definitive paradigm shift because of how effectively it devastated and eliminated the previous paradigm. It happened in a quicker, more concise manner than any preceding paradigm shift and while this does not necessarily make it a better fit for Kuhn, it can clearly be seen in the form of anomaly, crisis, resolution, and paradigm shift where the other forms of thinking are essentially eliminated. Lavoisier was able to do this without as much trouble as previous scientists due to the positions, social status, and wealth that he held. He not only made several important discoveries but, perhaps more importantly, re-defined the nomenclature and methods by which scientists in his field should work so that they all held the same assumptions. This sort of change was able to facilitate massive progress in the future as scientists were all working in the same scientific language[11]. He re-educated the scientific community through many methods and before long his theories were accepted. Today “his strategy of emphasizing exact experimentation, limited inductive generalization, the reform of language, and the construction of a unified scientific community is still utilized by scientists who wish to create new fields of specialization[12]”. His discoveries formed the new paradigm just as Kuhn defined. More importantly, the discoveries becoming the assumed knowledge along with these other changes in the system constituted true scientific progress in the Kuhnian sense.

Not all scientific episodes contain paradigms, as defined by Thomas Kuhn. The more recent the paradigm shift, the more clearly the paradigm shift fits into this model of a scientific revolution. We can see the shift change in all of them, but can more clearly account for progress the more closely the paradigm comes to our current thinking. Despite the differences in all of the episodes, they prove Thomas Kuhn’s notion of the scientific paradigm to be relevant and useful.

Bibliography:

Nicholas Copernicus, On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres

Arthur Donovan, Antoine Lavoisier: Science, Administration, and Revolution.          (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge.1993)

Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 3rd ed. (Chicago:  Univ. of     Chicago Press, 1996)

G.E.R. Lloyd  Early Greek Science: Thales to Aristotle. (New York: W.W. Norton &            Company Inc. 1970)

[1]   Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 3rd ed. (Chicago:  Univ. of Chicago Press, 1996), p. 5.

[2]Kuhn p. 64.

[3]Kuhn p. 52. 

[4]Kuhn p. 68.

[5]Herbert Butterfield, The Origins of Modern Science, 1300-1800 (London, 1949, pp. 1-7. (cited by Kuhn p. 85)

[6] G.E.R. Lloyd  Early Greek Science: Thales to Aristotle. (New York: W.W. Norton & Company Inc. 1970), p.121.

[7]Nicholas Copernicus, On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, Bk. 1, Ch. 7.

[8]Copernicus Bk. 1, Ch. 8.

[9]Copernicus Bk 1, Ch. 6.

[10]Copernicus Bk. 1, Ch. 8.

[11]Arthur Donovan, Antoine Lavoisier: Science, Administration, and Revolution. (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge.1993), p.157.

[12]Donovan p. 186.