The Road since Structure: Philosophical Essays, 1970-1993, with an Autobiographical Interview

by Thomas S. Kuhn, James Conant (Editor), John Haugeland (Editor)

Thomas Kuhn will undoubtedly be remembered primarily for The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , a book that introduced one of the most influential conceptions of scientific progress to emerge during the twentieth century. The Road Since Structure , assembled with Kuhn's input before his death in 1996, follows the development of his thought through the later years of his life: collected here are several essays extending and rethinking the perspectives of Structure as well as an extensive, fascinating autobiographical interview in which Kuhn discusses the course of his life and philosophy.

Genres: Philosophy, Science, Nonfiction, Physics, Sociology, History, History Of Science

336 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

American historian and philosopher of science, a leading contributor to the change of focus in the philosophy and sociology of science in the 1960s. Thomas Samuel Kuhn was born in Cincinnati, Ohio. He received a doctorate in theoretical physics from Harvard University in 1949. But he later shifted his interest to the history and philosophy of science, which he taught at Harvard, the University of California at Berkeley, Princeton University, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

In 1962, Kuhn published The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, which depicted the development of the basic natural sciences in an innovative way. According to Kuhn, the sciences do not uniformly progress strictly by scientific method. Rather, there are two fundamentally different phases of scientific development in the sciences. In the first phase, scientists work within a paradigm (set of accepted beliefs). When the foundation of the paradigm weakens and new theories and scientific methods begin to replace it, the next phase of scientific discovery takes place. Kuhn believes that scientific progress—that is, progress from one paradigm to another—has no logical reasoning. Kuhn's theory has triggered widespread, controversial discussion across many scientific disciplines.

Reviews

[Raunak Pillai]

Delightful collection of essays cataloguing the developments in Kuhn's writing since Structure. In particular, it seems there are three major changes in his thinking worthy of note.

First, Kuhn seems to rework his notion of incommensurability of scientific theories to focus less on method and more on concepts. I'm not quite convinced of the benefits of abandoning methodological incommensurability (or reducing it to its conceptual counterpart). It seems there are definitely changes in the practices and standards of a scientific community after revolution that aren't just a byproduct of them having different concepts and ways of classifying things in the world.

Second, and related to the first point, Kuhn seems to focus heavily on scientific change as inducing lexical change. So, for instance, the word "planets" includes the Earth after the Copernican revolution but not after. Tying paradigms to meaning in this way is a really intriguing development--it allows for clearer identification of revolutionary change and really underscores the way in which two paradigms resist comparison.

Finally, Kuhn seems committed to elaborating on the metaphor of paradigm change as like biological evolution. So the development of a new field or paradigm is like the formation of a new species, and the adequacy of a theory is like the niche the theory occupies. It is curious that Kuhn seems to leave this connection at the level of metaphor rather than connecting these ideas with developments in dual inheritance theory that were well underway by the late 90s. Treating scientific theories as literally social products subject to cultural evolutionary pressures seems like a natural implication of these ideas.

[Marcelo]

Este libro siempre me va a generar ptsd porque después de leer a Kuhn en el artículo de metáfora y ciencia decir que era "un realista impenitente" le dije a uno de los mayores expertos en la obra de Kuhn que este era un "realista impenitente" y él me miró con una profunda cara de dolor y decepción que me atravesó el alma
Pd: he leido articulos seleccionados pero no lo he leido entero, espero que la policia de goodreads no me detenga

[Rodney Harvill · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book explores changes in Thomas Kuhn's thoughts about the progress of scientific development since he wrote The Structure of Scientific Revolutions in 1962. It consists of three parts:

1. Reconceiving Scientific Revolutions
2. Comments and Replies
3. A discussion with Thomas S. Kuhn

Part 1 contains five essays. The first, What Are Scientific Revolutions, contrasts normal and revolutionary scientific development. One example of normal science given in this essay is Boyles law because it merely clarified the relationship between the pressure and volume of a gas at a constant temperature. Examples of revolutionary science were the shift from Aristotelian physics to Newton's second law of motion, the electrostatics of a battery and the origins of quantum theory. I particularly enjoyed Kuhn's explanation of the Aristotelian definition of motion. It was quite enlightening. The next three essays deal with linguistics and lexical theory and point out that a change in a scientific paradigm causes a corresponding change in the scientific lexicon such that new words are added, some words fall out of use and others experience a change in meaning. Although I find linguistics interesting, I nonetheless found these essays tedious reading. The fifth essay, The Trouble with the Historical Philosophy of Science, contrasts the historical record of science with the actual practice of science. The traditional pillars for the authority of scientific knowledge are the priority and independence of facts relative to theory and the production of truths, probable truths or approximations to truth by the practice of science. Kuhn points out that "solid" facts of observation can be pliable, often dependent on the observer or his choice of instrumentation. He also notes that individual scientists committed to one interpretation or another sometimes defend their viewpoint inappropriately and allow their beliefs to reign supreme over evidence. Although he acknowledges that such practices sometimes damage the credibility of science, he considers them necessary characteristics of any developmental or evolutionary process.

Part 2 contains six essays. The first, Reflections on My Critics, is a reply to seven essays critical to Kuhn's ideas outlined in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions that were published together in Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge, edited by Imre Lakatos and Alan Musgrave. The second essay, Theory Change as Structure Change: Comments on the Sneed Formalism, is a commentary on The Logical Structure of Mathematical Physics, by J.D. Sneed, that also compares it to The Structure and Dynamics of Theories, by Wofgang Stegmüller. The third essay, Metaphor in Science, This essay is a commentary on Richard Boyd’s essay “Metaphor and Theory Change: What is ‘Metaphor’ a Metaphor For?” The fourth essay, Rationality and Theory Choice, returns to the relationship of a theory to its lexicon, and the fifth essay, The Natural and the Human Sciences, contrasts and compares the natural sciences with the social sciences. The final essay, Afterwords, is a response to nine essays presented at a 1990 conference in honor of Kuhn and published together in World Changes: Thomas Kuhn and the Nature of Science, edited by Paul Horwich.

Part 3 is the transcript of a 1995 interview in Athens of Thomas Kuhn by interviewers Aristides Baltas, Kostas Gavroglu and Vassiliki Kindi. This interview revealed tidbits about Kuhn's family background, early education, university education during World War II and his academic career. Personally, I found this section to be one of the more interesting parts of the book.

[Tom]

Chapter 10:

The Natural and Human Sciences

[Smccabbages · Rating 3 out of 5]

This one is hard to rate because the material is so much more objectionable, but it is essential to understand Structure. Read with several grains of salt.

[Joseph Jupille · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book. I wish Kuhn had been able to stick around a little longer to follow some of the markers he lays down here.