Questions tagged [kuhn]

Thomas Kuhn (1922 – 1996) was an American physicist, historian and philosopher of science. His most influential work was his 1962 book 'The Structure of Scientific Revolutions'.

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Is naturalism falsifiable?

From Wikipedia: In philosophy, naturalism is the idea or belief that only natural laws and forces (as opposed to supernatural ones) operate in the universe.[1] Naturalism is not so much a special system as a point of view or tendency common to a…
user48437
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Where does Kuhn talks about the five characteristics for the choice of theory?

Kuhn (1977, 321–2) identifies five characteristics that provide the shared basis for a choice of theory: 1. accuracy; 2. consistency (both internal and with other relevant currently accepted theories); 3. scope (its consequences should extend…
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How should we choose between different theories according to Rorty, based on Kuhn?

Popper tried to distinguish a scientific framework from a non-scientific framework ( like Marxism or Psychoanalysis, according to him) by suggesting the criterion of falsification. Kuhn suggested that also science, like other fields, changes…
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Is AI in a Crisis of Science?

According to Thomas S. Kuhn in his classic work, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions: ...'normal science' presupposes a conceptual and instrumental framework or paradigm accepted by an entire scientific community ... [T]he resulting mode of…
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Why was the quest for an objective universal demarcation criteria deemed untenable after Kuhn?

I know that Kuhn had developed his own demarcation criteria to determine whether something is science or not. But according to my lecturer the quest for an objective, universal demarcation criteria had been deemed untenable after Kuhn. Why is that…
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Thomas Kuhn's "paradigm" and its 22 different uses

Thomas S. Kuhn, both in his Second Thoughts on Paradigms [1971] and in the Postscript to the second edition of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions [1970], refers to someone who found 22 different uses of the term "paradigm". On the other hand,…
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Did the later Kuhn write that when he said "theory" he meant "disciplinary matrix"/"paradigm"?

In his later writings (from 1969 on), Thomas Kuhn stopped talking about "paradigms" or "disciplinary matrixes" and started talking about "theories" instead. Some Kuhnians say that from then on, when he wrote "theory", he meant…
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In which sense does Kuhn acknowledge the importance of metaphors in science?

Kuhn, in Metaphors and Through [1993], claims: “Metaphors play an essential role in establishing links between scientific language and the world. Those links are not, however, given once and for all. Theory change, in particular, is accompanied…
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What did Kuhn specifically say about "history for philosophical purposes"?

Kuhn had little formal philosophical training but was nonetheless fully conscious of the significance of his innovation for philosophy, and indeed he called his work ‘history for philosophical purposes’ (Kuhn 2000, 276). (source: Stanford…
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which books or essays "Kuhn [1981]" is referred to?

I found a quote by Thomas Kuhn and the source reports: Kuhn [1981] but I cannot find that year in his bibliography . By googling "Kuhn [1981]" I found the following: What are Scientific Revolutions? In Kruger, Daston and Heidelberger (Eds.)…
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Popper vs Kuhn, Science and Progression

So I've looked over multiple research papers and books and still can't grasp the idea of what the difference between Popper and Kuhn is based on their view of how science works and progresses? Based on what I've read and managed to come up with is…
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Is Kuhn's approach to the development of science historicist or not?

On one hand, Kuhn approach to the development of science is ahistorical in the sense that he doesn't believe in cumulative scientific progress or in their being any sort of scientific 'geist' that grows and realizes itself through the efforts of…
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Differences and similarities between Kuhn and Quine about the indeterminacy of translation

About Thomas Kuhn's semantic incommensurability: Early on Kuhn drew a parallel with Quine's thesis of the indeterminacy of translation (1970a, 202; 1970c, 268). According to the latter, if we are translating one language into another, there are…
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In which sense Quine denies that the translated expressions do have a meaning?

Early on Kuhn drew a parallel with Quine's thesis of the indeterminacy of translation (1970a, 202; 1970c, 268). According to the latter, if we are translating one language into another, there are inevitably a multitude of ways of providing a…
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is perceptual / observational incommensurability equivalent to ontological incommensurability?

perceptual/observational—observational evidence cannot provide a common basis for theory comparison, since perceptual experience is theory-dependent Kuhn expresses or builds on the idea that participants in different disciplinary matrices will see…
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