Reading guide for 10/26: Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions,
sects. X-XI and p.s. sect. 4 (pp. 111-143, 191-198)
Section X
• How are the phenomena of changes in visual gestalt (e.g., changes in whether we see the images above as ducks facing left or as rabbits facing right) suggestive of how scientists working under different paradigms might see the world differently or even see a different world (pp. 111-113)?
• How is historical evidence for the influence of paradigms on observation likely to be different from psychological evidence for changes of visual gestalt (pp. 113-115)?
• What are Kuhn’s examples of paradigm-induced changes in visual experience as well as in what is seen in a broader sense (115-120)?
• Why does he reject the account of such changes as changes in the interpretation of data which remains a constant “given” (120-129)?
• How does the Daltonian revolution illustrate changes both in the relations of laboratory operations to the current paradigm and in the results of these operations (pp. 129-135)?
Postscript §4
• What does Kuhn have in mind when he speaks of “tacit” knowledge (pp. 191-192)?
• What does Kuhn have in mind when he says “our world is populated in the first instance not by stimuli but by the objects of our sensations” (pp. 192-193)?
• What role do exemplars play in our learning to see things? In particular, why does Kuhn resist the description of this knowledge as rules or criteria applied to interpretation (p. 193-198)?
Section XI
• Why are scientific revolutions largely invisible (pp. 136-138)?
• In what connection does Kuhn quote Whitehead’s quip that "a science that hesitates to forget its founders is lost" and how does Kuhn modify it (pp. 138-140)?
• What is the mistaken impression created by the arrangement of material in textbooks (pp. 140-141)?
• How does the example of Boyle’s definition illustrate these points (pp. 141-143)?