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The Ashtray
In 1972, philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn threw an ashtray at Errol Morris. This book is the result.
At the time, Morris was a graduate student. Now we know him as one of the most celebrated and restlessly probing filmmakers of our time, the creator of such classics of documentary investigation as The Thin Blue Line and The Fog of War. Kuhn, meanwhile, was—and, posthumously, remains—a star in his field, the author of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, a landmark book that has sold well over a million copies and introduced the concept of “paradigm shifts” to the larger culture. And Morris thought the idea was bunk.
The Ashtray tells why—and in doing so, it makes a powerful case for Morris’s way of viewing the world, and the centrality to that view of a fundamental conception of the necessity of truth. “For me,” Morris writes, “truth is about the relationship between language and the world: a correspondence idea of truth.” He has no patience for philosophical systems that aim for internal coherence and disdain the world itself. Morris is after bigger game: he wants to establish as clearly as possible what we know and can say about the world, reality, history, our actions and interactions. It’s the fundamental desire that animates his filmmaking, whether he’s probing Robert McNamara about Vietnam or the oddball owner of a pet cemetery. Truth may be slippery, but that doesn’t mean we have to grease its path of escape through philosophical evasions. Rather, Morris argues powerfully, it is our duty to do everything we can to establish and support it.
In a time when truth feels ever more embattled, under siege from political lies and virtual lives alike, The Ashtray is a bracing reminder of its value, delivered by a figure who has, over decades, uniquely earned our trust through his commitment to truth. No Morris fan should miss it.
At the time, Morris was a graduate student. Now we know him as one of the most celebrated and restlessly probing filmmakers of our time, the creator of such classics of documentary investigation as The Thin Blue Line and The Fog of War. Kuhn, meanwhile, was—and, posthumously, remains—a star in his field, the author of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, a landmark book that has sold well over a million copies and introduced the concept of “paradigm shifts” to the larger culture. And Morris thought the idea was bunk.
The Ashtray tells why—and in doing so, it makes a powerful case for Morris’s way of viewing the world, and the centrality to that view of a fundamental conception of the necessity of truth. “For me,” Morris writes, “truth is about the relationship between language and the world: a correspondence idea of truth.” He has no patience for philosophical systems that aim for internal coherence and disdain the world itself. Morris is after bigger game: he wants to establish as clearly as possible what we know and can say about the world, reality, history, our actions and interactions. It’s the fundamental desire that animates his filmmaking, whether he’s probing Robert McNamara about Vietnam or the oddball owner of a pet cemetery. Truth may be slippery, but that doesn’t mean we have to grease its path of escape through philosophical evasions. Rather, Morris argues powerfully, it is our duty to do everything we can to establish and support it.
In a time when truth feels ever more embattled, under siege from political lies and virtual lives alike, The Ashtray is a bracing reminder of its value, delivered by a figure who has, over decades, uniquely earned our trust through his commitment to truth. No Morris fan should miss it.
192 pages, Hardcover
First published May 16, 2018
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July 3, 2018
Wow. When someone suggested I read a book called The Ashtray, written by a documentary film-maker, it didn't strike me that it would be a book that gave deep insights into the history and philosophy of science - while also being a remarkable reading experience. In fact, I almost didn't bother with it, but I'm glad that I did.
The titular ashtray was thrown at the author when he was a grad student - thrown by one of the two best known names in the philosophy of science, Thomas Kuhn, he of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions and the concept of paradigm shifts. Kuhn didn't like the young Errol Morris daring to challenge his ideas and reacted with what some would regard as a less than philosophical reply by hurling a heavy glass ashtray at him.
Part of the reason that reading The Ashtray is a remarkable experience is because it's a book that feels in some ways like watching a documentary. I have to confess I've never seen any of Morris's work, but he uses visual imagery both to make his point and to be playful. I don't usually like semi-coffee table format books, but this was a delight to read. Even the copious marginal notes (more stylish than footnotes) have a little edge as the inline reference numbers are elegantly shaded red. (Also one of the margin notes quotes me, so what's not to like?)
My position on Kuhn's work is primarily ignorance. As a science writer, my interest in history of science is to give context and narrative structure to explaining aspects of science - and I tend not to think of philosophy of science much at all, except to make the point that science isn't about finding 'the truth', but is about our best theories given the current data. I've never read Kuhn's book, and all I had assumed it covered was the idea of having sudden shifts of scientific viewpoint - effectively the philosophy of science equivalent of catastrophism (as opposed to gradualism) in geology. What I hadn't realised was that Kuhn's ideas are thoroughly embedded in post-modernist woo.
I ought to emphasise that my only exposure to Kuhn is via The Ashtray, and Morris clearly detests Kuhn's ideas - but assuming Morris is telling it straight, it's hard to understand why Kuhn is even mentioned anymore, unless, like me, most people who do so aren't aware that he wasn't just talking about sudden shifts in scientific viewpoints, but that a) he thought this meant the world itself was changed, because there is no reality, only the words we use to describe it, b) progress in science is a meaningless concept and c) we can't really say anything about, say Newton, because when he used words, he didn't mean the same thing as we do by those words. His 'gravity' is not our 'gravity'. (I may be a little adrift in the subtle detail in that whirlwind summary, but that seems to be the message.)
I'd honestly thought that history and philosophy of science had pretty much abandoned post-modernism after the Sokal hoax and the realisation that it seemed far more about its advocates pretensions than having anything useful to say about science, so it was a revelation to me that Kuhn was a full-blown advocate of this approach.
Bearing in mind Morris is dealing with an approach to philosophy where it's almost impossible to discern meaning and unless words like 'hermeneutics' and 'exegesis' are part of your everyday vocabulary it's easy to get lost, his explanations are almost all easy to follow. There were a couple of pages near the middle where my eyes did start to glaze over, but Morris was soon back to form.
In the end, this is still a very odd book. It's an anti-love letter to Kuhn, a powerful introduction to one aspect of history and philosophy of science and a dramatic dismantling of a horror that has loomed over science and scientists like a Frankenstein's monster since the 60s. I loved it.
The titular ashtray was thrown at the author when he was a grad student - thrown by one of the two best known names in the philosophy of science, Thomas Kuhn, he of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions and the concept of paradigm shifts. Kuhn didn't like the young Errol Morris daring to challenge his ideas and reacted with what some would regard as a less than philosophical reply by hurling a heavy glass ashtray at him.
Part of the reason that reading The Ashtray is a remarkable experience is because it's a book that feels in some ways like watching a documentary. I have to confess I've never seen any of Morris's work, but he uses visual imagery both to make his point and to be playful. I don't usually like semi-coffee table format books, but this was a delight to read. Even the copious marginal notes (more stylish than footnotes) have a little edge as the inline reference numbers are elegantly shaded red. (Also one of the margin notes quotes me, so what's not to like?)
My position on Kuhn's work is primarily ignorance. As a science writer, my interest in history of science is to give context and narrative structure to explaining aspects of science - and I tend not to think of philosophy of science much at all, except to make the point that science isn't about finding 'the truth', but is about our best theories given the current data. I've never read Kuhn's book, and all I had assumed it covered was the idea of having sudden shifts of scientific viewpoint - effectively the philosophy of science equivalent of catastrophism (as opposed to gradualism) in geology. What I hadn't realised was that Kuhn's ideas are thoroughly embedded in post-modernist woo.
I ought to emphasise that my only exposure to Kuhn is via The Ashtray, and Morris clearly detests Kuhn's ideas - but assuming Morris is telling it straight, it's hard to understand why Kuhn is even mentioned anymore, unless, like me, most people who do so aren't aware that he wasn't just talking about sudden shifts in scientific viewpoints, but that a) he thought this meant the world itself was changed, because there is no reality, only the words we use to describe it, b) progress in science is a meaningless concept and c) we can't really say anything about, say Newton, because when he used words, he didn't mean the same thing as we do by those words. His 'gravity' is not our 'gravity'. (I may be a little adrift in the subtle detail in that whirlwind summary, but that seems to be the message.)
I'd honestly thought that history and philosophy of science had pretty much abandoned post-modernism after the Sokal hoax and the realisation that it seemed far more about its advocates pretensions than having anything useful to say about science, so it was a revelation to me that Kuhn was a full-blown advocate of this approach.
Bearing in mind Morris is dealing with an approach to philosophy where it's almost impossible to discern meaning and unless words like 'hermeneutics' and 'exegesis' are part of your everyday vocabulary it's easy to get lost, his explanations are almost all easy to follow. There were a couple of pages near the middle where my eyes did start to glaze over, but Morris was soon back to form.
In the end, this is still a very odd book. It's an anti-love letter to Kuhn, a powerful introduction to one aspect of history and philosophy of science and a dramatic dismantling of a horror that has loomed over science and scientists like a Frankenstein's monster since the 60s. I loved it.
April 30, 2019
Call this autobiographical philosophy. Errol Morris is a renowned filmmaker, and a one-time philosophy graduate student. He’s not an academic philosopher, or, at least prior to this book, a participant in the arcane debates of professional philosophers. His motivation for writing the book, from what he has said here, is autobiographical. He was at one time a student of Thomas Kuhn (the “man who denied reality”) and had a falling out with Kuhn, resulting in Kuhn’s throwing an ashtray at Morris and in Morris having to leave the graduate program at Princeton where he’d been studying with Kuhn.
Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is an immensely influential book, not only in philosophical circles but in popular culture. Kuhn brought the term “paradigm shift” — a characterization of a kind of large scale shift in scientific world view and consequently in scientific practice — into common use, to describe more vaguely any significant shift in how something is thought about.
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is also a flashpoint among some traditional philosophers of science and practicing scientists. Kuhn’s arguments undermine some of the familiar tenets of how science as an enterprise has been conceived — tenets having to do with what constitutes scientific progress, how theories relate to one another, how theories supplant older theories, and underlying beliefs about what scientific reality itself is.
Morris’s opposition to Kuhn — and this is again what makes this book autobiographical philosophy — is vehement. He believes that Kuhn is not just guilty of technically faulty argument. Kuhn defies common sense, and does so in a way as to undermine the things we rely upon to know what’s going on in the world and determine what to do about it. Morris says of Kuhn’s work, “It is, at best, an inchoate, unholy mixture of the work of others — Ludwig Wittgenstein, Charles Darwin, Rudolf Carnap, Norwood Russell Hanson, Alexandre Koyré, Jerome Bruner, and more. At worst, it is an assault on truth and progress.”
In fact, Morris places Kuhn on the wrong side in a really large array of philosophical issues and discussions —
- truth
- skepticism
- scientific realism
- naive realism
- scientific progress
- incommensurability
- translatability
- reference
And I’m sure I’m overlooking others.
But it’s that last one — reference — that seems to be at the center of not only Morris’s arguments against Kuhn, but also his feelings about Kuhn. There is a simple idea about reference that a lot of us would like to be valid. That idea is that the world is composed of things, and words (at least nouns) in languages refer to them. “Tables” refers to . . . tables. There are tables out there, and we have a word for them. It’s as simple as that. I suppose you could call it the common sense theory of reference.
Kuhn, in Morris’s account, unforgivably messes with that simple theory of reference. Part of what makes a scientific revolution a revolution is that, in fact, the “objects” of scientific theory change — what light is changed when scientists developed electromagnetic theory and then quantum theory. That, in Kuhn’s theory, is in fact a major reason the change in theory is important — what we refer to when we talk of light in electromagnetic theory is different than what we referred to when we previously talked of light.
Morris takes inspiration from Saul Kripke’s discussion of reference and meaning in his book, Naming and Necessity. The problem that Kripke took up in the lectures comprising that book is in fact the problem of reference — how names of objects actually refer to those objects. His primary opponents are philosophers, such as Bertrand Russell, who contended that, in one way or another, various descriptions do that job (e.g., George Washington is the man who was the first President of the United States, George Washington was the General who led his troops across the Delaware River during the Revolutionary War, . . . ). Kripke’s counterclaim is that George Washington would still have been the same person (entity) if he hadn’t done those things. He proposes instead a “causal theory of reference” by which speakers of a language historically fix the reference of a name to an object.
A similar argument regarding general terms, such as "gold", depends on a theory of “natural kinds”, that contra many modern theories of linguistics, the world itself, independently of language, is divided up into “kinds” of entities (gold, stones, tables) and referred to by those familiar general terms.
How well Kripke’s arguments apply to Kuhn’s shifting paradigms and the consequences for scientific language use can be debated. Certainly Kuhn rejects any kind of scientific realism that may be implied by Kripke’s arguments. And, to Morris’s credit, Kuhn often expands from his theory of scientific revolutions and what is going on in the referents of scientific theories to remarks about language and reality in general.
I guess my biggest problem with Morris’s arguments, as philosophical arguments and not just autobiographical exclamations, is that he doesn’t really dig into the arguments. His stance seems not far from a kind of caricature of a G.E. Moore style defense of common sense. Kuhn denies reality and truth, at least as we common sensically take those things to be — isn’t that outrageous?
I should mention that Moore’s actual arguments are much more subtle and usher in decades of discussion about the relationship between philosophy and common sense. Morris’s own stance is much more of a condemnation of Kuhn for abandoning what Morris takes to be common sense.
Morris’s outrage reminds me of one of my undergraduate professors, who once referred to the Pre-Socratic philosophers (Thales, Parmenides, etc.) as “the Pre-Socratic comedians.” Thales said, at least according to Aristotle, that the nature of all matter is water. Well, if all matter is, in its nature, water, then not only is water water, but stones are water, too. Stones are obviously not water. Thales has made a ludicrous mistake. Hence “Pre-Socratic comedians.”
But of course Thales didn’t think that stones were water, in any ordinary sense anyway. The dismissal is simplistic and misses everything that Thales may have actually thought.
I’m not saying that Morris’s dismissal of Kuhn is as simplistic as my undergraduate professor’s dismissal of the Pre-Socratics, but the point is that it is a dismissal, a refusal to actually enter into Kuhn’s thoughts, entertain them, and find what truth (if any) there is in them. Like Thales' claim about water, Kuhn’s arguments about reference, truth, and incommensurability have far more subtlety than a straightforward denial of common sense. To the extent that Morris mounts arguments against Kuhn, e.g., in providing a version of Kripke’s arguments on reference, he counterposes a theory that he feels retains the common sense he wants to be true to Kuhn’s own work. Philosophical engagement per se is missing.
All of that said, why read the book? Why not read the philosophical literature about Kuhn instead? Morris cites some of that work, including Donald Davidson’s “On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme”, itself a renowned and often remarked paper. If you’re interested in the philosophical debate, I would recommend doing exactly that.
On the other hand, Morris is an interesting person in his own right. That was certainly why I read the book. I have loved his films, partly because of the passion behind them. The autobiographical aspects of this book, including his vehement, long-lived reaction to the incident referred to in the book’s title, are both entertaining and deepen my understanding of Morris and his work.
Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is an immensely influential book, not only in philosophical circles but in popular culture. Kuhn brought the term “paradigm shift” — a characterization of a kind of large scale shift in scientific world view and consequently in scientific practice — into common use, to describe more vaguely any significant shift in how something is thought about.
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is also a flashpoint among some traditional philosophers of science and practicing scientists. Kuhn’s arguments undermine some of the familiar tenets of how science as an enterprise has been conceived — tenets having to do with what constitutes scientific progress, how theories relate to one another, how theories supplant older theories, and underlying beliefs about what scientific reality itself is.
Morris’s opposition to Kuhn — and this is again what makes this book autobiographical philosophy — is vehement. He believes that Kuhn is not just guilty of technically faulty argument. Kuhn defies common sense, and does so in a way as to undermine the things we rely upon to know what’s going on in the world and determine what to do about it. Morris says of Kuhn’s work, “It is, at best, an inchoate, unholy mixture of the work of others — Ludwig Wittgenstein, Charles Darwin, Rudolf Carnap, Norwood Russell Hanson, Alexandre Koyré, Jerome Bruner, and more. At worst, it is an assault on truth and progress.”
In fact, Morris places Kuhn on the wrong side in a really large array of philosophical issues and discussions —
- truth
- skepticism
- scientific realism
- naive realism
- scientific progress
- incommensurability
- translatability
- reference
And I’m sure I’m overlooking others.
But it’s that last one — reference — that seems to be at the center of not only Morris’s arguments against Kuhn, but also his feelings about Kuhn. There is a simple idea about reference that a lot of us would like to be valid. That idea is that the world is composed of things, and words (at least nouns) in languages refer to them. “Tables” refers to . . . tables. There are tables out there, and we have a word for them. It’s as simple as that. I suppose you could call it the common sense theory of reference.
Kuhn, in Morris’s account, unforgivably messes with that simple theory of reference. Part of what makes a scientific revolution a revolution is that, in fact, the “objects” of scientific theory change — what light is changed when scientists developed electromagnetic theory and then quantum theory. That, in Kuhn’s theory, is in fact a major reason the change in theory is important — what we refer to when we talk of light in electromagnetic theory is different than what we referred to when we previously talked of light.
Morris takes inspiration from Saul Kripke’s discussion of reference and meaning in his book, Naming and Necessity. The problem that Kripke took up in the lectures comprising that book is in fact the problem of reference — how names of objects actually refer to those objects. His primary opponents are philosophers, such as Bertrand Russell, who contended that, in one way or another, various descriptions do that job (e.g., George Washington is the man who was the first President of the United States, George Washington was the General who led his troops across the Delaware River during the Revolutionary War, . . . ). Kripke’s counterclaim is that George Washington would still have been the same person (entity) if he hadn’t done those things. He proposes instead a “causal theory of reference” by which speakers of a language historically fix the reference of a name to an object.
A similar argument regarding general terms, such as "gold", depends on a theory of “natural kinds”, that contra many modern theories of linguistics, the world itself, independently of language, is divided up into “kinds” of entities (gold, stones, tables) and referred to by those familiar general terms.
How well Kripke’s arguments apply to Kuhn’s shifting paradigms and the consequences for scientific language use can be debated. Certainly Kuhn rejects any kind of scientific realism that may be implied by Kripke’s arguments. And, to Morris’s credit, Kuhn often expands from his theory of scientific revolutions and what is going on in the referents of scientific theories to remarks about language and reality in general.
I guess my biggest problem with Morris’s arguments, as philosophical arguments and not just autobiographical exclamations, is that he doesn’t really dig into the arguments. His stance seems not far from a kind of caricature of a G.E. Moore style defense of common sense. Kuhn denies reality and truth, at least as we common sensically take those things to be — isn’t that outrageous?
I should mention that Moore’s actual arguments are much more subtle and usher in decades of discussion about the relationship between philosophy and common sense. Morris’s own stance is much more of a condemnation of Kuhn for abandoning what Morris takes to be common sense.
Morris’s outrage reminds me of one of my undergraduate professors, who once referred to the Pre-Socratic philosophers (Thales, Parmenides, etc.) as “the Pre-Socratic comedians.” Thales said, at least according to Aristotle, that the nature of all matter is water. Well, if all matter is, in its nature, water, then not only is water water, but stones are water, too. Stones are obviously not water. Thales has made a ludicrous mistake. Hence “Pre-Socratic comedians.”
But of course Thales didn’t think that stones were water, in any ordinary sense anyway. The dismissal is simplistic and misses everything that Thales may have actually thought.
I’m not saying that Morris’s dismissal of Kuhn is as simplistic as my undergraduate professor’s dismissal of the Pre-Socratics, but the point is that it is a dismissal, a refusal to actually enter into Kuhn’s thoughts, entertain them, and find what truth (if any) there is in them. Like Thales' claim about water, Kuhn’s arguments about reference, truth, and incommensurability have far more subtlety than a straightforward denial of common sense. To the extent that Morris mounts arguments against Kuhn, e.g., in providing a version of Kripke’s arguments on reference, he counterposes a theory that he feels retains the common sense he wants to be true to Kuhn’s own work. Philosophical engagement per se is missing.
All of that said, why read the book? Why not read the philosophical literature about Kuhn instead? Morris cites some of that work, including Donald Davidson’s “On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme”, itself a renowned and often remarked paper. If you’re interested in the philosophical debate, I would recommend doing exactly that.
On the other hand, Morris is an interesting person in his own right. That was certainly why I read the book. I have loved his films, partly because of the passion behind them. The autobiographical aspects of this book, including his vehement, long-lived reaction to the incident referred to in the book’s title, are both entertaining and deepen my understanding of Morris and his work.
August 28, 2018
This was definitely an interesting read. Morris, in all of his novels, makes you think logically about what he is saying. I defiantly found this enjoyable, while a bit confusing.
July 6, 2018
I was incited to read this vendetta against Thomas Kuhn by Tim Maudlin’s combatative review of The Ashtray and Adam Becker’s What is Real?, just after reading a more negative review in The Guardian. After I finished reading it, I read several more reviews. Almost everyone thinks Morris incinerated a straw man when he was burning Kuhn. But what a great fire!
One reviewer calls this book a romp; another (Philip Kitcher in the LARB, probably the best of the bunch) compares Morris to “a Stoppardian figure, generously lavishing his broad and quirky learning on a comedy of ideas.” That’s almost perfect.
As someone who first came to the Kuhnian controversy in the early 80s by way of the puckish Paul Feyerabend, I have trouble taking the argument seriously – which doesn’t mean it’s not an argument I enjoy. Morris throws everything into his book, including the ashtray, a series of capsule interviews with Hilary Putnam, Noam Chomsky, Steven Wienberg, Saul Kripke, Stanley Cavell and other luminaries, and a kaleidescopic array of photographs and exuberant commentary in the margins. (Kudos to U of Chicago for a book design worthy of its spirit.) This is high caliber entertainment for anyone interested in the philosophy of science – which (with the exception of Feyerabend) has never been so much fun.
One reviewer calls this book a romp; another (Philip Kitcher in the LARB, probably the best of the bunch) compares Morris to “a Stoppardian figure, generously lavishing his broad and quirky learning on a comedy of ideas.” That’s almost perfect.
As someone who first came to the Kuhnian controversy in the early 80s by way of the puckish Paul Feyerabend, I have trouble taking the argument seriously – which doesn’t mean it’s not an argument I enjoy. Morris throws everything into his book, including the ashtray, a series of capsule interviews with Hilary Putnam, Noam Chomsky, Steven Wienberg, Saul Kripke, Stanley Cavell and other luminaries, and a kaleidescopic array of photographs and exuberant commentary in the margins. (Kudos to U of Chicago for a book design worthy of its spirit.) This is high caliber entertainment for anyone interested in the philosophy of science – which (with the exception of Feyerabend) has never been so much fun.
March 28, 2023
This is a really weird book. Morris spends a lot of energy and wit attacking Thomas Kuhn's «The Structure of Scientific Revolutions», but he seems to completely miss what the book is actually about. The following quotation encapsulates Morris' misguided approach quite well: „What’s the difference between being convinced by Einstein that special relativity is true and E = mc2 and being convinced by Hitler that the Protocols fo the Elders of Zion is true and Jews should be eradicated from the face of the earth“ (p. 91).
What we see here is Morris's fear that Kuhn's approach which he considers to be completely relativistic allows for every opinion about the world and that we are ultimately unable to discern between true and false statements. But this is simply a gross misreading of Kuhn. The examples for scientific paradigms Kuhn looks at are not mere inventions or bigotted opinions, but models which have been developed by (proto-)scientists based on their empirical findings. And they have proven to be useful in their time. While the Ptolemaic system seems inadequate to us, it was able to explain some (many?) observed phenomenons. – This is completely different from Hitler's antisemitism, which is not a scientific model to begin with and has no explanatory power.
EDIT: For a longer review (in German) see my blog.
What we see here is Morris's fear that Kuhn's approach which he considers to be completely relativistic allows for every opinion about the world and that we are ultimately unable to discern between true and false statements. But this is simply a gross misreading of Kuhn. The examples for scientific paradigms Kuhn looks at are not mere inventions or bigotted opinions, but models which have been developed by (proto-)scientists based on their empirical findings. And they have proven to be useful in their time. While the Ptolemaic system seems inadequate to us, it was able to explain some (many?) observed phenomenons. – This is completely different from Hitler's antisemitism, which is not a scientific model to begin with and has no explanatory power.
EDIT: For a longer review (in German) see my blog.
January 23, 2024
دادنامه ای علیه نگرش تحلیلی و اومانیستی بر فلسفه
با مقدمه بی نظیر مترجم فارسی دکتر صادقی
با مقدمه بی نظیر مترجم فارسی دکتر صادقی
July 20, 2019
I think Goodreads should have ‘ditched’ or ‘stopped reading’ button. I didn’t really like the Kuhn’s book, even though I am a scientist myself, and I see why after reading a few chapters of this book. But, after chapter 5, I lost my little remaining motivation to carry on. It is a book about philosophy, which I usually enjoy reading, but this one - I cannot say it is inspiring nor insightful.
March 27, 2021
Somewhat pretentious book. The author was a student of Thomas Kuhn. The author is not a scientist. This book talks about Kuhn's view in "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" and how Kuhn is wrong. What I take away from reading this is that the world view supporting pieces of Kuhn's paradigm shift, are not based in real observations. This might or might not be a true way to look at things. I studied Kuhn in college some 40 years ago. About the same time I was studying Quantum Mechanics in two different classes (Chemistry and Physics). My experience with Quantum Mechanics reinforces the idea of the paradigm shift. Prior to understanding Quantum Mechanics my world view was X, afterward Y, and afterword hard to even think about the world as X afterwords. Quantum entanglement fundamentally alters our view of real, it violates our notions of predication. This book assumes reality is all there is and does not like abstraction. This book reads in a sense like a vanity piece.
March 4, 2019
A very thoughtful and thought-provoking book. Though clearly the work of an amateur (albeit a well-read amateur with, no less, some training in the field), this book was well worth the few hours it took to read it. The questions it tackles are fascinating ones, and I'm much in sympathy with the positions it stakes. If the book isn't original, or especially rigorous, so what. It's author is a brilliant film-maker, and I found it a pleasure to consider the fields of history, science, history of science, and philosophy/sociology of science from his vantage. Whether his treatment of Kuhn was fully accurate or fair, I can't assess. At the least, it was quite interesting. Overall, a solid read.
February 28, 2022
i’ve never read this book this is just a trauma response sorry
August 17, 2018
Oh boy, where to start?
This book is basically a personal attack on Kuhn, who threw an ashtray at Morris and apparently kicked him out of Princeton. (In my experience it takes a lot to kick someone out of a university, but I wasn't at an Ivy in the early 70s, so let's just assume that's the full truth for a minute.) There's no rhyme or reason to the 'arguments' presented in the book, which jumps from Kuhn's theories on paradigm shift to Kripke's theories on proper names, except for a vague theme of trying to determine what "truth" is. The book is littered with footnotes, half of which should have been incorporated into the main text, and the other half of which are almost completely irrelevant to the text.
Morris never bothers to mention anybody who agrees with Kuhn, mentioning at the beginning of the book that some people do, but implying that it's just laypeople who were conned into thinking the book was revolutionary because of hype. Okay, fine. But after finishing the book, I personally find it more likely that Morris was kicked out of Princeton for not being academically up to snuff. His readings of most of the philosophers and linguists he discusses are superficial at best, and deliberately misrepresentative at worst.
Morris also can't decide if he wants to treat philosophical and linguistic concepts within a philosophical or linguistic framework (or paradigm, as it were!) or as a layperson/outsider. He ignores the theoretical background of many of the arguments he considers incorrect, in order to portray them as bizarre statements arising fully-formed out of - what? wild guessing? intuition? Both? And for all his professed insistence on determining what "truth" is, he only very barely delves into epistemology, which is ostensibly the focus of the book.
In summary then, this reads like an undergraduate in philosophy who's skimmed a few wikipedia pages attempting to refute a 60 year old argument because the person who came up with it was a jerk to him 50 years ago. It's an attempt to appear more clever than this supposed "genius" by presenting to readership with no background in the subject. And after all that, it's still unclear whether or not Kuhn was actually onto something or not. I gave it two stars instead of one because I liked the interviews with Chomsky and the bits about Kripke.
This book is basically a personal attack on Kuhn, who threw an ashtray at Morris and apparently kicked him out of Princeton. (In my experience it takes a lot to kick someone out of a university, but I wasn't at an Ivy in the early 70s, so let's just assume that's the full truth for a minute.) There's no rhyme or reason to the 'arguments' presented in the book, which jumps from Kuhn's theories on paradigm shift to Kripke's theories on proper names, except for a vague theme of trying to determine what "truth" is. The book is littered with footnotes, half of which should have been incorporated into the main text, and the other half of which are almost completely irrelevant to the text.
Morris never bothers to mention anybody who agrees with Kuhn, mentioning at the beginning of the book that some people do, but implying that it's just laypeople who were conned into thinking the book was revolutionary because of hype. Okay, fine. But after finishing the book, I personally find it more likely that Morris was kicked out of Princeton for not being academically up to snuff. His readings of most of the philosophers and linguists he discusses are superficial at best, and deliberately misrepresentative at worst.
Morris also can't decide if he wants to treat philosophical and linguistic concepts within a philosophical or linguistic framework (or paradigm, as it were!) or as a layperson/outsider. He ignores the theoretical background of many of the arguments he considers incorrect, in order to portray them as bizarre statements arising fully-formed out of - what? wild guessing? intuition? Both? And for all his professed insistence on determining what "truth" is, he only very barely delves into epistemology, which is ostensibly the focus of the book.
In summary then, this reads like an undergraduate in philosophy who's skimmed a few wikipedia pages attempting to refute a 60 year old argument because the person who came up with it was a jerk to him 50 years ago. It's an attempt to appear more clever than this supposed "genius" by presenting to readership with no background in the subject. And after all that, it's still unclear whether or not Kuhn was actually onto something or not. I gave it two stars instead of one because I liked the interviews with Chomsky and the bits about Kripke.
July 20, 2018
The Ashtray (Or the Man Who Denied Reality) by Errol Morris.
Reviewed by Galen Weitkamp.
You probably know Errol Morris as a filmmaker. The Thin Blue Line and The Fog of War are probably his two most cited works. The Ashtray is not a book about film, nor the legal system nor about the atrocities of war. It is a book about the philosophy and history of science and their relationship to truth.
As a young man, before he thought about filmmaking, Morris’s aspirations included rock climbing and philosophy. He climbed the edifices that rose above the campus of Princeton University and he studied the history of science under Thomas S. Kuhn. Kuhn is well-known as the author of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, the work that made “paradigm shifts” and “incommensurable concepts,” part of a vernacular that spilled over into all areas of academia. Apparently Morris and Kuhn had disagreements over Structure and one day Kuhn ended the dispute by launching an ashtray in Morris’s general direction. That ended Morris’s stint at Princeton. He went from there to Berkeley and studied under Paul Feyerablend, with whom he also disagreed.
According to Morris, Kuhn maintained that scientific theories can only be judged from within a critic’s chosen paradigm; that there is no outside or empirical perspective from which two paradigms can be compared nor is there any yardstick by which scientific progress can be measured. Truth is in general a social construct and the story of progress in science is just a story.
Morris argues in opposition:
“Is guilt or innocence of a crime a matter of opinion? Is it relative? Is it subjective? A jury might decide you’re guilty of a crime that you haven’t committed. Yet you’re innocent...But we believe there is a fact of the matter. You either did it or you didn’t. Period. If you were strapped into an electric chair...Would you be satisfied with the claim that there is no definitive answer to the question of whether you’re guilty or innocent? No such thing as absolute truth or falsity?”
One can argue whether or not Thomas Kuhn is as anti-realist as Morris makes him out to be. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is not an easy read. It twists, it speeds forward and walks itself back, it qualifies and makes blatant assertions. It can be read, criticized and defended in many ways. Morris takes aim at the anti-realist Kuhn, the Kuhn for whom truth is relative. The Kuhn who maintains reference is impossible; i.e. that the term energy as used in modern statistical mechanics is incommensurable with the term as understood by Joule in the nineteenth century. To his argument Morris brings discussions and interviews with logician Saul Kripke, philosopher Hilary Putnam, scientist Steven Weinberg and others.
Personally I’m inclined to side with Morris against the anti-realist version of Kuhn, except in the realm of mathematics where I count myself, or at least used to, among the formalists. It seems easy enough to refer to a real number. But is the thing you’re referring to a Dedekind cut or an equivalence class of Cauchy sequences? Truth about real numbers is perhaps less ambiguous than reference. There are some unambiguously true things one can say about real numbers, but there are also essentially undecidable questions about them. Nevertheless, it seems to me, that there is indisputable progress in mathematics as well as in the sciences.
The Ashtray is a very entertaining read - even the footnotes. It is filled with beautiful and sometimes poignant photographs and illustrations - and it features an amusing cast of characters (listed in the end).
Reviewed by Galen Weitkamp.
You probably know Errol Morris as a filmmaker. The Thin Blue Line and The Fog of War are probably his two most cited works. The Ashtray is not a book about film, nor the legal system nor about the atrocities of war. It is a book about the philosophy and history of science and their relationship to truth.
As a young man, before he thought about filmmaking, Morris’s aspirations included rock climbing and philosophy. He climbed the edifices that rose above the campus of Princeton University and he studied the history of science under Thomas S. Kuhn. Kuhn is well-known as the author of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, the work that made “paradigm shifts” and “incommensurable concepts,” part of a vernacular that spilled over into all areas of academia. Apparently Morris and Kuhn had disagreements over Structure and one day Kuhn ended the dispute by launching an ashtray in Morris’s general direction. That ended Morris’s stint at Princeton. He went from there to Berkeley and studied under Paul Feyerablend, with whom he also disagreed.
According to Morris, Kuhn maintained that scientific theories can only be judged from within a critic’s chosen paradigm; that there is no outside or empirical perspective from which two paradigms can be compared nor is there any yardstick by which scientific progress can be measured. Truth is in general a social construct and the story of progress in science is just a story.
Morris argues in opposition:
“Is guilt or innocence of a crime a matter of opinion? Is it relative? Is it subjective? A jury might decide you’re guilty of a crime that you haven’t committed. Yet you’re innocent...But we believe there is a fact of the matter. You either did it or you didn’t. Period. If you were strapped into an electric chair...Would you be satisfied with the claim that there is no definitive answer to the question of whether you’re guilty or innocent? No such thing as absolute truth or falsity?”
One can argue whether or not Thomas Kuhn is as anti-realist as Morris makes him out to be. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is not an easy read. It twists, it speeds forward and walks itself back, it qualifies and makes blatant assertions. It can be read, criticized and defended in many ways. Morris takes aim at the anti-realist Kuhn, the Kuhn for whom truth is relative. The Kuhn who maintains reference is impossible; i.e. that the term energy as used in modern statistical mechanics is incommensurable with the term as understood by Joule in the nineteenth century. To his argument Morris brings discussions and interviews with logician Saul Kripke, philosopher Hilary Putnam, scientist Steven Weinberg and others.
Personally I’m inclined to side with Morris against the anti-realist version of Kuhn, except in the realm of mathematics where I count myself, or at least used to, among the formalists. It seems easy enough to refer to a real number. But is the thing you’re referring to a Dedekind cut or an equivalence class of Cauchy sequences? Truth about real numbers is perhaps less ambiguous than reference. There are some unambiguously true things one can say about real numbers, but there are also essentially undecidable questions about them. Nevertheless, it seems to me, that there is indisputable progress in mathematics as well as in the sciences.
The Ashtray is a very entertaining read - even the footnotes. It is filled with beautiful and sometimes poignant photographs and illustrations - and it features an amusing cast of characters (listed in the end).
January 18, 2019
Before he gained fame as a film maker, Errol Morris was a graduate student in philosophy, studying with Thomas Kuhn at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Kuhn was famous for his “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” which introduced the idea of “paradigm shifts” and “incommensurability, “ which claimed that there could be no direct translation of concepts from earlier times into our own - for instance, that the word “earth” carried a host of connotations to a Medieval scholar who believed the sun revolved around the earth that are literally unimaginable to us. Kuhn said the idea first occurred to him when he learned the proof that the square root of 2 could not be expressed as a ratio of integers - irrational numbers simply are not translatable as a ratio. Kuhn’s theories became widely, one might even say wildly, popular to explain every sort of cultural change and difference of perspective, but Morris would have none of it. He was sure Kuhn was simply wrong- otherwise how was history or translation ever possible? Didn’t Kuhn himself in making his argument recreate the perspective of those Ptolemaic thinkers? As Morris tells it, he badgered Kuhn to the point he became so angry he threw an ashtray at his head - which Morris took as evidence that his criticisms hit home ( though another interpretation might be possible - that Morris was just a relentless pain in the ass.) Morris insists Kuhn opened the door to relativism - if there are only perspectives, what happens to Truth? Morris would later put his belief in there always being a Truth to discover to good use on documentaries like “The Thin Blue Line, “ but he remains tone deaf to what makes Kuhn’s work important to so many. Revisiting his graduate studies in philosophy, Morris interviews some of his old mentors, including Saul Kripke, Hilary Putnam and Stanley Cavell and these interviews give the book it’s real interest whether or not you agree with Morris take on the problem (I do not). A generation earlier, Wittgenstein re-defined meaning as use, turning away from the standard picture of names as labels on objects. But naming as reference has been revived by Kripke and Morris does a excellent job of presenting the issues in the dispute - no mean feat, as Kripke’s modal logic has otherwise defeated my understanding. Kuhn, I believe, argues for something that has was suggested by the phenomenologists in another context - namely that we live in a "life -world" which comes to us whole ((think too of Wittgenstein’s forms of life and his saying, “If a lion could talk, we would not understand him.”)and within which concepts take on meanings inseparable from their context. Morris wants there to be a Reality underlying our perspectives but can we ever know it outside yet another perspective? An entertaining if maddening book. I just might throw that ashtray myself...
January 26, 2025
Before I write a review I must create context for how and why I had engaged with this book.
I am currently on a journey, attempting to enjoy reading more regularly, as well as identifying which types of books intrigue me.
I was recommended this book from a friend and I truly didn’t know what this book was going to be about. After reading there were components I liked; namely the discourse revolving around truth and whether such an entity is achievable or not through science. However, the author often went on tangents when brining up supplementary sources, evidence, or context for the main narrative of the book; a fundamental disagreement with Kuhn when it comes to the identification of truth in the world. Most of these tangents I didn’t mind, I enjoyed the discussion on glyptodonts for example, and how evolutionary biology ties into the main discussion on truth and its relation to language.
Overall, the book made me think a lot of how science is fundamentally routed in the language we discuss it in. However, unfortunately for Kuhn, I disagree with the premise that this makes it impossible to understand ideas from the past or make our thoughts comprehensive to our future selves. I fundamentally believe an objective world exists (outside of human perception), and I think humans often struggle to ascertain this great beyond. Despite this, I think science is capable of describing this objective world in a way impervious to ‘incommensurability’, but there are human truths that aren’t so robust.
I think this book reads well, and it is worth checking out if one is intrigued by epistemology and its relation to language.
I am currently on a journey, attempting to enjoy reading more regularly, as well as identifying which types of books intrigue me.
I was recommended this book from a friend and I truly didn’t know what this book was going to be about. After reading there were components I liked; namely the discourse revolving around truth and whether such an entity is achievable or not through science. However, the author often went on tangents when brining up supplementary sources, evidence, or context for the main narrative of the book; a fundamental disagreement with Kuhn when it comes to the identification of truth in the world. Most of these tangents I didn’t mind, I enjoyed the discussion on glyptodonts for example, and how evolutionary biology ties into the main discussion on truth and its relation to language.
Overall, the book made me think a lot of how science is fundamentally routed in the language we discuss it in. However, unfortunately for Kuhn, I disagree with the premise that this makes it impossible to understand ideas from the past or make our thoughts comprehensive to our future selves. I fundamentally believe an objective world exists (outside of human perception), and I think humans often struggle to ascertain this great beyond. Despite this, I think science is capable of describing this objective world in a way impervious to ‘incommensurability’, but there are human truths that aren’t so robust.
I think this book reads well, and it is worth checking out if one is intrigued by epistemology and its relation to language.
August 13, 2018
When Errol Morris was a graduate student in philosophy, he took a seminar with Thomas Kuhn, author of one of the most influential books on the philosophy of science, "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions." Morris challenged Kuhn's idea of "incommensurability", that is that all knowledge is contingent on the social/ideological mindset or "paradigm" of the era. Kuhn couldn't refute Morris's logic, so he threw an ashtray at his head and had him expelled. "The Ashray" is the student's revenge.
Morris leads the reader through some weighty philosophical ideas. Much of it was a little over my head, but Morris, while not dumbing anything down, writes for the general reader. He's making a plea for the importance of language. What is truth? Why is the way we use language important? The subtext of the book is that meaning and truth are currently being leached from our language.
Like other of his books I've read, "The Ashtray" is a graphically beautiful and well designed book, replete with high resolution pictures (megaladons, renaissance paintings, Hitler's grade school class photo). One quibble I have is the footnotes (and there are tons; Morris gives DFW a run for his money)
are tiny. I probably missed a lot because I couldn't read them without a magnifying glass).
"The Ashtray" is a difficult read but worth the effort.
Morris leads the reader through some weighty philosophical ideas. Much of it was a little over my head, but Morris, while not dumbing anything down, writes for the general reader. He's making a plea for the importance of language. What is truth? Why is the way we use language important? The subtext of the book is that meaning and truth are currently being leached from our language.
Like other of his books I've read, "The Ashtray" is a graphically beautiful and well designed book, replete with high resolution pictures (megaladons, renaissance paintings, Hitler's grade school class photo). One quibble I have is the footnotes (and there are tons; Morris gives DFW a run for his money)
are tiny. I probably missed a lot because I couldn't read them without a magnifying glass).
"The Ashtray" is a difficult read but worth the effort.
December 8, 2018
Errol Morris is one of my favorite film directors, for movies such as The Thin Blue Line, The Fog of War, and Fast Cheap and Out of Control. I did not know he was a philosophy student and studied under Thomas Kuhn, the historian of science and philosopher who wrote “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions”. That book has had a long history and is very popular among postmodern deconstructionists who attack modern science with alacrity. As a practitioner of experimental science I have long taken exception to Kuhn and his lackeys who claim science is a cultural privilege that has no more validity than any other world view or mythology. Morris takes him to task, and indeed the title of this book stems from an argument he and Kuhn had that led Kuhn to throw a class ash tray at him. This book disscects Kuhn’s notions and pretty well shreds them, with the help from scientific scholars like one of my personal heros, Stevven Weinberg. He argues there is a real world, and careful, logical work can understand it more and more clearly.. Along the way he delves into some interesting topics about language, epistemology and science. The book is rather technical, although clearly written, and may not be interesting to a lot of folks, but I found it pretty engaging.
July 5, 2019
When the acclaimed documentary filmmaker Errol Morris was a graduate student studying under Thomas Kuhn in the 1970s he wrote an essay critical of Kuhn's work and Kuhn threw an ashtray at him. Morris has been holding onto the grudge for a long time and has now produced one of the most entertaining books about philosophy that you'll ever read. It's a takedown of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions and Kuhn's ideas in general and I don't agree with everything that Morris says but it's so joyfully free of the proprieties of academic philosophy that it really doesn't matter. The book is beautifully produced in large format on glossy paper with copious illustrations and digressive footnotes that run down the sides of the pages. Morris alludes to all sorts of literature and artworks and films and it's a really fun read. He really does know a lot about philosophy and science and interviews a bunch of interesting people. Recommended.
Read
January 22, 2022A bit conflicted about this one. I don’t think Morris’s reading of Kuhn is particularly generous, but I wouldn’t be too generous with someone who threw an ashtray at my head either. What worries me is that this book seems a part of a liberal tradition of blaming folks who recognize the social construction of knowledge and belief with those who exploit that to evil ends. I’ve thought a lot about these questions over the last ten years or so, and, I’ve come to the conclusion that ethics are more important than epistemology, at least if you care about the fate of humanity. I’m probably wrong, though.
December 15, 2025
The book is a criticism of Thomas Kuhn's execrable philosophy of science. Kuhn denied objective reality and the possibility of scientific progress. Of course this is nonsense and I agree with Morris's criticisms and refutations of this pernicious view.
However, the book goes off in too many tangents, e.g., the legend of Hippasus or the biology of extinct armadillos. Morris also loves footnotes, half the content consists of them. (In one footnote he approvingly quotes another writer on the utility of footnotes.) But they distract the reader from the flow of the text and the book would be much better if he removed most of them.
However, the book goes off in too many tangents, e.g., the legend of Hippasus or the biology of extinct armadillos. Morris also loves footnotes, half the content consists of them. (In one footnote he approvingly quotes another writer on the utility of footnotes.) But they distract the reader from the flow of the text and the book would be much better if he removed most of them.
October 13, 2018
This is a weird book. There are many things I didn't like, e.g. how EM jumps from topic to topic w/o making a good context. Also the whole book being about accusing TK of his strange behaviors and wrong ideas is not very appealing. But the book overall is pretty good. The main concept is if there is an objective reality, and TK's paraadigm ideas about science seem to not acknowledge it. A wide range of topics in philosophy are touched. But sometimes in a very simplistic and shallow fashion.
May 16, 2021
[Imported automatically from my blog. Some formatting there may not have translated here.]
Back in the day, specifically my college days, I read The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas S. Kuhn. In fact, it's one of the few books from that era that I still have on my shelves (I just looked: yeah, there it is).
You see, Caltech insisted that even us physics geeks had to take one course per term in non-stem fields: history, English, econ, … or philosophy. And even though I didn't (still don't) have the type of brain suited to deep thinking about questions that people have been thinking about for millennia without getting answers, I said: sure, I'll take that philosophy of science course.
So I read Kuhn, and I was far more impressed by his argument than I should have been.
Which was, loosely speaking: during normal, non-revolutionary periods, scientists operate within the dominant paradigm relevant to their research field. For example, Ptolemaic astronomers observed the heavens and hammered their findings into the Ptolemaic geocentric cosmos. With difficulty, of course, but, hey, science is not easy.
But along comes a revolutionary theory with a new paradigm, like Copernicus's, that does a better job of describing reality. (Although the theories, Kuhn said, were 'incommensurable'; you couldn't really refute or support one via appeals to the other.) Then we have a paradigm shift, adherents to the old theory either adapt or die, and the new paradigm establishes its dominance, usually without literal trips to the guillotine.
About the same time I was inordinately impressed by Kuhn, a grad student named Errol Morris was at Princeton, enrolled in the Program in the History and Philosophy of Science, which Kuhn headed. They did not get on. According to Morris, Kuhn was a petty chain-smoking tyrant, forbidding him from attending lectures from other competing philosophers. And things culminated in Kuhn (allegedly) throwing this book's butt-filled titular object at Morris's head during a particularly heated "philosophical" discussion.
So Morris went on to become a famous documentary filmmaker instead of an obscure philosopher. But he still retained an interest, and (I think it's fair to say) kind of a grudge, and this book, safely published two decades after Kuhn's death.
It's a full-throated attack on the Kuhnian viewpoint, which Morris contends is a hopeless denial of human ability to apprehend reality and truth, crushed as we are by the weight of our dominant paradigms, only on occasion to escape, just to be recrushed by the next paradigm we just shifted to. Morris makes his philosophical case for (instead) the pursuit of truth "through reason, through observation, through investigation, through thought, through science".
Morris is a political leftie, and his book is kind of interesting also as a sidelight onto just how radically left academia was back then. He interviews the late Hilary Putnam, once a proud member of the Maoist Progressive Labor Party while a Harvard prof. And Noam Chomsky. And he tells of his arrest while blocking the entrances to the Institute for Defense Analysis near Princeton back in 1972. Et cetera.
If that were all, this book would be pretty grim and tedious. But there's a lot of humor too, some pop culture references. Since he's a filmmaker, Morris knows his flicks: there are long asides discussing particular aspects of Citizen Kane and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence. Numerous footnotes, not quite at the volume preferred by David Foster Wallace, but close. (One of the footnotes mentions Morris's fondness for, yes, David Foster Wallace.) And there are lots of offbeat illustrations, about one per page. My personal favorite:
By Jean-Léon Gérôme - Sergey Prokopenko, Public Domain, Link
We don't often do naked ladies here at Pun Salad, but it's art, so it's OK. That's "Truth Coming Out of Her Well". She's pissed.
I've seen a number of reviews that suggest Morris may be overstating his case in his eagerness to trash all things Kuhnian. I am (see what I said about my brain up there) not one to judge. But this is a relentlessly entertaining book, especially if you skim over all the philosophical navel-gazing.
August 15, 2018
Not my usual thing. 3.5, probably. Fascinating, though.
April 19, 2019
The whole story about the actual ashtray was all too personal, and I loved it. The most entertaining philosophy of science book I have read so far.
May 26, 2020
Very interesting, but way over my head...Probably got only half of what he was talking about.
May 29, 2025
arrow moris you gotta b e quickr on th e draaw thn tthat
September 26, 2023
The author's ability to convey emotions through their words is astounding. This book moved me deeply.
February 21, 2021
Let me preface this by saying that I’m a huge fan of Errol Morris’ documentary films. I went into this essay/coffee table book assuming it would relate more to his filmmaking, or his ideas about media and the search for knowledge. I was mistaken, and that’s the reason I found this so disappointing.
What this book actually is, is a critical précis of Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, situated amidst a series of anecdotes offered by Morris during his time at Princeton. Unfortunately, I’ve never read Kuhn, nor am I particularly well-versed in the analytic tradition. As a result, many of the philosophers he references go completely over my head.
Admittedly, this isn’t Morris’ fault - I expected a certain type of book, and I got another. I’ll have to follow up by reading Kuhn, Quine, Frege, Kripke, Ayer, and the later Wittgenstein. Once I do that, maybe I will get more from Morris’ essay the second time around.
If you are unfamiliar with the analytic tradition, including the various thinkers in the philosophy of science, mathematics, linguistics and logic, I would skip this book.
What this book actually is, is a critical précis of Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, situated amidst a series of anecdotes offered by Morris during his time at Princeton. Unfortunately, I’ve never read Kuhn, nor am I particularly well-versed in the analytic tradition. As a result, many of the philosophers he references go completely over my head.
Admittedly, this isn’t Morris’ fault - I expected a certain type of book, and I got another. I’ll have to follow up by reading Kuhn, Quine, Frege, Kripke, Ayer, and the later Wittgenstein. Once I do that, maybe I will get more from Morris’ essay the second time around.
If you are unfamiliar with the analytic tradition, including the various thinkers in the philosophy of science, mathematics, linguistics and logic, I would skip this book.
May 28, 2020
My opinion isn't really valid because I haven't read "Structure" - but now I will. Meanwhile, an interesting read, and I have a copy of "Structure" ready to go.
Read
August 29, 2018Morris demonstrates that there should be more interviews and pictures in works of philosophy.
I pretty much agree with Kitcher's review:
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/t...
I pretty much agree with Kitcher's review:
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/t...
January 21, 2019
This book is a hatchet job on Thomas Kuhn, beautifully presented (lavishly illustrated and oversized) like a companion book to a PBS mini-series. The author was a grad student under Kuhn who later became a documentary film maker. The only film of his I’ve see is Fog of War, which I thought was excellent. I disagree entirely with the positions for which Morris advocates. It amuses me greatly that whenever Morris quotes Kuhn to attack his position and knock him down, I think “what Kuhn says seems right.” I read the Structure of Scientific Revolutions decades ago but now think maybe I should re-read. Morris’s interview with Noam Chomsky makes me think I should re-read Chomsky too. Morris is threatened by relativism and in this book he tries to reassure himself by demonizing Thomas Kuhn. For me, Morris’s arguments do not hold.
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