Abstract
This paper looks back to Thomas S. Kuhn’s seminal work of 1962, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, as a landmark in the relations between history and philosophy of science. I propose that Kuhn’s book, though read both by historians and by philosophers, contributed to the process by which they have developed largely separate concerns in recent decades. Kuhn was a committed participant in interdisciplinary discourse, and yet his book was read in fundamentally different ways in the two disciplinary communities. To understand how this happened, I propose that we need to modify Kuhn’s own categories of historical analysis to recognize the bearing on disciplinary communities of factors that he discounted as “external.” I argue that philosophers and historians approached Kuhn’s work with preoccupations shaped by the cultural and political context of Cold War debates about science, though that context yielded very different orientations in the two communities.
Paradigm was a perfectly good word until I messed it up
– Thomas S. Kuhn
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Notes
- 1.
Fuller (2000) and Zammito (2004) together provide the nearest thing available to an intellectual history of Kuhn’s work and its influence on science studies. Fuller also provides some valuable biographical information, and the autobiographical comments in “A Discussion with Thomas S, Kuhn,” in Kuhn (2000, 255–323), are also valuable. An illuminating article, Andresen (1999), indicates the possibility for more work along these lines. Philosophical studies of Kuhn include: Bird (2000) and Hoyningen-Huene (1993).
- 2.
On the “marriage” and prospects for divorce, see Zammito (2004, 95–96).
- 3.
The importance of the Cold War context in Kuhn’s work is emphasized by Fuller (2000, esp. 1–37). Although I have learned a lot from Fuller, readers will be able to discern that I do not share his overall interpretation of Kuhn, which portrays him as an ideological foot soldier in a Cold-War campaign to shield science from critical examination. Instead, I see aspects of the ideological context of the times as having shaped the readings of Kuhn’s work in sometimes contradictory and paradoxical ways, and often against his own inclination. The various contemporary readings of Kuhn’s Structure reflect the multiple interests of its readers, and do not require us to suppose, as Fuller does, that Kuhn’s work was largely vacuous and unworthy of serious attention. Nor do I share Fuller’s view that Kuhn’s influence constituted a malign force shaping the whole field of science studies. As I shall indicate, I see Kuhn as having little positive influence on philosophers and almost none (directly) on historians. His most significant influence within science studies was mediated by sociologists, whose reading of his work he specifically repudiated.
- 4.
- 5.
The intellectual historian Peter Novick has written: “one cannot reduce Popper’s philosophy to his struggle against Marxism, but that concern permeated all his work”—including, I would suggest, his response to Kuhn (Novick 1998, 298). See also Hacohen (2000, 530–34).
- 6.
- 7.
- 8.
- 9.
On Bernal, see Brown (2005).
- 10.
- 11.
Kuhn’s most important statement on the topic after Structure was “Commensurability, Comparability, Communicability” (1983), in Kuhn (2000, 33–57). See also Zammito (2004, 52–89), Hoyningen-Huene (1993, 206–22). Zammito notes that Kuhn’s acceptance that the problem of incommensurability was basically a linguistic issue, as asserted by such philosophers as Dudley Shapere and Israel Sheffler, was ultimately self-frustrating. It is hard to avoid the reflection that the debate that resulted was an instance of sustained mutual incomprehension, if not of ultimate linguistic incommensurability, between Kuhn and his philosophical interlocutors. His continued struggles to resolve the issues at stake suggest, however, that Kuhn was reluctant to acknowledge this.
- 12.
See especially Kuhn’s lecture at Harvard University in 1991: “The Trouble with Historical Philosophy of Science,” in Kuhn (2000, 105–20).
- 13.
- 14.
Robert K. Merton, “The Normative Structure of Science” (1942), in Merton (1973, 267–78). See also Mendelsohn (1989), Hollinger (1983). Peter Novick has noted that Merton’s original explanation of the coincidence between scientific norms and the values of a democratic society specifically criticized only Nazi Germany. When the exposition was revised in 1949, criticisms of the Soviet Union were added. See Novick (1988, 296–97 fn. 28).
- 15.
- 16.
- 17.
Introducing a new edition of his text in 1990, Gillispie acknowledged that the discipline of history of science had shifted in the intervening years to embrace a more externalist outlook, a shift that he ascribed to the leftist cultural movements of the 1960s and 1970s. See Gillispie (1990, xiv–xv, xvi–xvii, xx–xxi).
- 18.
- 19.
Porter (1986).
- 20.
On Cavell, see Kuhn (2000, 297).
- 21.
- 22.
- 23.
- 24.
- 25.
Bloor (1991, 3–23, 157–61, 175–79).
- 26.
Barnes and Bloor (1982, 47).
- 27.
Kuhn (2000, 315–16).
- 28.
Bloor (1991, 7, 175–79).
- 29.
Zammito (2004, 137–50).
- 30.
Kuhn (2000, 255–323).
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Golinski, J. (2011). Thomas Kuhn and Interdisciplinary Conversation: Why Historians and Philosophers of Science Stopped Talking to One Another. In: Mauskopf, S., Schmaltz, T. (eds) Integrating History and Philosophy of Science. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 263. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1745-9_2
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