Reading guide for 10/27: Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, sect. IX (pp. 92-110)

 

Section IX

•  What are Kuhn’s reasons for calling a change in paradigm a revolution (pp. 92-94)?

•  Why does discovery require a non-cumulative change of paradigm (pp. 94-97)?

•  Why is the same true for the invention of theory—and what are the (3) possible relations between the phenomena the new theory might concern and the old paradigm (pp. 97-98)?

•  Kuhn objects to an account of theoretical change according to which an old theory is a is a restriction of a new one to the range of phenomena the old one suffices to explain—what is his objection (98-103)?

•  In what respects, both cognitive and normative, is work under a new paradigm different from (indeed “incommensurable” with) what has gone on before (pp. 103-110)? (General discussion on p. 103 and pp. 108-110 sandwiches a discussion of examples on pp. 104-107.)