SSR fails
Kuhn's failed ideology captures sociology of religion, not science
Philosophers place Kuhn among useless historians of science. Historians of science place Kuhn among useless philosopher of science. Physicists misunderstand the philosophy of science. They also ignore good history of science. Each know that Kuhn couldn't have been right in their niche, but being niche dwellers, they don't share their slice of understanding. And Kuhn continues to be adulated.
• A sad history of the destruction of 'paradigm' as a useful word
History can now recount the sad descent of Kuhn's 'Structure of Scientific Revolutions' from a period piece monograph, to an easy to digest ideology for lazy profs and incurious grad students, which then provided cover to irrational religious ideologies, and then to sub-rational political chatter. By the time 'paradigm' had reached TV talking heads and marketing hype-sters, it was no longer worth even a pair-o'-dimes. (That 20 cents American.)
When a book like SSR becomes fashionable -- something has gone wrong. To compare fads in history of ideas, consider the malignant influence of Heidegger on German letters, French minds, and liberal American theology. Or, the interpretive festive of mistakes generated by Wittgenstein's collected fragments (Philosophical Investigations) on English philosophers and their American fellow-travelers, one of whom was Kuhn.
• Kuhn brings Wittgenstein on stage to explicate revolutions in science
Kuhn's 'paradigm' is Wittgenstein's 'language game' applied to (or better, imposed upon) the history of science. Kuhn's concept of scientific discovery is LW's 'dawning of an aspect' -- cue Kekulé's dream of snakes -- of seeing... a bracelet of snakes each biting the other's tail... as... the structure for the benzene molecule.
Ah-ha moments are the stuff of B-movie depictions of "arriving at the truth." There is melodrama here (key music) -- the flash of insight! -- truth brought to light! -- or in a Heideggerian vein, truth revealing herself. There's nothing new about metaphorically assimilating everyday language of visual perception to what is claimed to be intellectual apprehension, especially in dreaming. Surely, it's older than Plato.
American theology also welcomed the 'language game' as a way of protecting its core faith-based creeds from any form of empirical or rational critique. Thus, the "axioms" of xianity cannot be questioned since they belong to a faith-based community's language game. Only those who play the game by its rules can say anything about the game. Nothing can be said against the game which would destroy an "axiom". That's a given of faith. Outsiders who refuse to be 'converted' need not apply. No wonder SSR appeared unto theologians as a godsend, literally.
• "Here I stand. I can't do otherwise." Kuhn ends up looking like an xian apologist defending irrationalism.
Traditional xian theology for 1,500 years used "apologetics" to repel its critics precisely as Kuhn attributes that tactic to scientists during a 'revolutionary period'. Words change their accustomed meanings and people talk past one another. SSR is much "theodicy" in the name of protecting a possible, nascent paradigm.
One problem common to 'seeing...as...' and 'language game' -- they resist participation by outsiders. I see that blob as a duck and you see it as a rabbit. Fine, we're just not experiencing the same thing despite the single blobby source of our perceptions. That's what truth is like -- you either see it or you don't.
These words aren't Kuhn's, but they come close: I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge -- that myth is more potent than history. I believe that dreams are more powerful than facts -- that hope always triumphs over experience.... (Fulghum. All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten)
* Kuhn follows a canon of interpretation devised long ago to save the phenomenon of "God"
In xianity Paul of Tarsus (fl 50-65 CE) was a proud anti-intellectual. Tertullian (c.160-220 CE) was a proud irrationalist. We know because of Celsus' work, The true doctrine (ca 180 CE) that Greek philosophers considered the resurrection as a vile absurdity. Reanimating corpses was a disgusting thought, one which didn't square well with Epicureanism or Stoicism.
Tertullian like Paul proclaimed the resurrection as a xian axiom which he affirmed as an intellectual nihilist: "[C]ertum est, quia impossibile." (It is certain, because it is impossible.) Xianity presented in this way (as fideism) cannot be argued with or disproved -- it must be dismantled.
Kuhn proclaims that revolutionary science must have its Pauls and Tertullians those who would "justify Nature's ways to Man" by working overtime to save the phenomena of "the revolution" from Popper's arrows of falsification.
Faith, the trusting suspension of disbelief, always appears as theater of the absurd.
the anti_supernaturalist