Reading guide for Tues 10/6: Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, sects. I-II and p.s. sect. 1 (pp. 1-22, 174-181)

 

Kuhn refers to what look like chapters as “sections” (presumably because this was originally written as a contribution to the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science rather than as an independent volume); I’ll follow his practice. An extended postscript was added to the second edition and I’ll be assigning parts of it along with sections of the main text. Although your first official assignment is only the first two sections of the text and the first subsection of the postscript (along with its introductory paragraphs), I encourage you to look at Kuhn’s preface, too.

This and other guides to Kuhn’s book will consist primarily of questions suggesting things to look for in the text. Kuhn often structures his discussion by offering lists. Sometimes (as in the notes to section I below) I’ll direct you to them, but you should be on the lookout for lists elsewhere, too.

Section I

•  What are the tasks of historians under the development-by-accumulation model of the history of science and how do they prove difficult to carry out (pp. 1-3)?

•  What are the aspects of science (I count 7) that form his outline of the book (pp. 3-8)?

•  Kuhn expects objections to the effect that he is drawing conclusions about what science ought to be from a study of what it has been (and it might not have been what it ought to have been)—how does he reply (pp. 8-9)?

Section II

•  What is Kuhn’s initial characterization of paradigms (pp. 10-11)? (You might want to also look ahead at what he says about the idea in the second paragraph of the postscript at the top of p. 175.)

•  What distinguishes the periods preceding and following Newton’s Opticks (pp. 11-15)?

•  And more generally, what distinguishes the fact-gathering and the interpretative work of pre-paradigm and post-paradigm science (pp. 15-18)?

•  What is the effect of the emergence of a paradigm on the social structure of science and on its literature (pp. 18-22)?

Postscript, introduction and §1

•  What is Kuhn’s concept of a “scientific community” (pp. 176-178)?

•  What are Kuhn’s second thoughts about what is really acquired in the transition to mature science (pp. 178-179)?

•  What is the distinction he now wishes to draw between scientific communities and scientific subject matters (pp. 179-180)?