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 I haven’t assigned it, 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. 174 [175].*)
* When pages in the 2nd and 3rd editions differ from the 2012 edition, they are given in brackets.
• 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)?
Section III
• If normal science does not aim at major novelties, what is its goal (pp. 23-25)?
• Locate the three sorts of fact-gathering activities of normal science, the third of which itself comes in three varieties (pp. 25-30).
• What are the corresponding three sorts of theoretical activity (pp. 30-34)?
Postscript, introduction and §1
• What is Kuhn’s concept of a “scientific community” (pp. 175-177 [176-178])?
• What are Kuhn’s second thoughts about what is really acquired in the transition to mature science (pp. 177-178 [178-179])?
• What is the distinction he now wishes to draw between scientific communities and scientific subject matters (pp. 178-180 [179-180])?
• Notice also his brief, but important, comments on the size of communities and the srouce of revolutions (pp. 180 [180-181]).
* When pages in the 2nd and 3rd editions differ from the 2012 edition, they are given in brackets.
Section IV
• What are the respects in which Kuhn compares normal science to puzzle-solving activity (pp. 35-40)?
• What are the 4 sorts of rules or commitments that are derived from a paradigm (pp. 40-42)?
Postscript §2
• What is a “disciplinary matrix” and what are its 4 components (pp. 181-186 [181-187])?
Section V
• What is the difference between shared paradigms and shared rules of scientific practice (pp. 43-46)?
• What are Kuhn’s 4 reasons for holding that paradigms are prior to shared rules (pp. 46-51)?
Postscript §3
• What are exemplars and what is the “tacit knowledge” acquired from them (pp. 186-190 [187-191])?
Section VI
• Why do you think Kuhn calls factual novelties “discoveries” and theoretic novelties “inventions” (pp. 52-53)?
• Kuhn later says that the case of oxygen prompts the “impossible suggestion” that Priestley first discovered it and Lavoisier then invented it—what about the case suggests this description (pp. 53-56)? (The later comment is on p. 66.)
• How is the discovery of X-rays like and, especially, how is it different from the discovery of oxygen (pp. 57-61)?
• What is shown by the example of the Leyden jar (pp. 61-62)?
• What features do the phenomena described by Bruner and Postman share with scientific discovery (pp. 62-64)?
• Why does Kuhn think normal science is effective in producing novelty (pp. 64-65)?
Section VII
• What are Kuhn’s three examples of the emergence of new scientific theory and what are their common features (pp. 66-75)?
• What is shown by the existence of anticipations of these inventions (pp. 75-76)?
Section VIII
• What leads Kuhn to hold that “there is no such thing as research without counterinstances” (pp. 77-81)? (The quotation is from p. 79.)
• What is the typical first response to a theoretical anomaly (pp. 81-82)?
• What is necessary for an anomaly to evoke a crisis (pp. 82-84)?
• What does Kuhn claim generally about the way crises begin and what are the three ways he says they close (p. 84)?
• How does Kuhn compare the emergence of a new paradigm to the changes of visual gestalt discussed by Hanson—and how does he distinguish the two (pp. 84-85)?
• How does a new paradigm come about and what sorts of “extraordinary research” may lead to it (pp. 85-88)?
• Why do discoveries proliferate in periods of extraordinary research (pp. 88-89)?
• Who are the typical inventors of a new paradigm pp. 89-90)?
• Note how Kuhn’s concluding comments both look back to what he has said and point to the rest of the book (pp. 90-91).
Assignment for Fri. 10/25
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 [95-97])?
• 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)?
• What objection to his view does he see foresee being made on the basis of the positivists’ conception of scientific theories (98-100)?
• What conflict does he see between this view and the function of paradigms (pp. 100-101)?
Assignment for Mon. 10/28
• What logical gap does he see in the positivists’ argument (pp. 101-103)?
• 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)? (Kuhn’s general discussion on p. 103 and pp. 108-110 sandwiches a discussion of examples on pp. 104-107.)
Assignment for Wed. 10/30
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)?
Assignment for Fri. 11/1
• 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. 129-134 [129-135])?
Postscript §4
• What does Kuhn have in mind when he speaks of “tacit” knowledge (pp. 190-191 [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. 191-192 [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. 192-197 [193-198])?
Assignment for Mon. 11/4
Section XI
• Why are scientific revolutions largely invisible (pp. 135-137 [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 [137-139)?
• What is the mistaken impression created by the arrangement of material in textbooks (pp. 139-140 [140-141])?
• How does the example of Boyle’s definition illustrate these points (pp. 140-142 [141-143])?
Section XII
• What is the context in which paradigms are tested (pp. 143-144 [144-145])?
• What are Kuhn’s criticisms of probabilistic verification and Popper’s falsification as accounts of the testing of paradigms (pp. 144-146 [145-147])?
Assignment for Wed. 11/6
• What are the reasons Kuhn cites “why proponents of competing paradigms must fail to make contact with each other’s viewpoints” (pp. 147-149 [147-150])? (I count 3.)
• How does conversion to a new paradigm come about (pp. 149-151 [150-152])?
• What sorts of arguments does Kuhn cite as leading to conversion (pp. 151-156 [152-157])? (I count 4.)
• According to Kuhn, what is at issue in paradigm debates (pp. 156-158 [157-159])?
Postscript §5
• How and why do reasons and arguments offered during scientific revolutions differ from mathematical proofs (pp. 197-199 [198-200])?
• What is the role of translation in persuasion of the value of a new paradigm (pp. 199-201 [200-202])?
• What is the difference between persuasion and conversion (pp. 201-203 [202-204])?
Section XIII
• What grounds does Kuhn give for saying that we take progress as a criterion for considering a discipline to be a science (pp. 159-161 [160-162])?
• Why is the activity of normal science bound to appear as progress (pp. 161-162 [162-163])?
• What features of normal science will tend to lead to progress?—and progress of what sort (pp. 162-165 [163-166])?
• What common characteristics does Kuhn find in scientific communities (pp. 165-168 [166-169])?
• Why will a change of paradigms seem to be progress?—and in what respects will it really be progress (pp. 168-169 [169-170])?
• In what ways does Kuhn compare scientific progress to Darwinian evolution (pp. 169-172 [170-173])?
Postscript §6
• In what respects is Kuhn willing to grant that his view of science is a kind of relativism (p. 205 [pp. 203-204])?
• What grounds does he give for holding that it is not mere relativism (pp. 204-205 [205-207])?
Postscript §7
• In what way does Kuhn say he has used descriptions of what science is as evidence for what it ought to be (pp. 206-207 [207-208])?
• In what ways does Kuhn grant that the history of science is similar to the history of other disciplines (p. 207 [pp. 208-209])?
• What does Kuhn cite as distinguishing features of science (pp. 207-208 [209-210])?