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Shapere's
Criticism of Kuhn's Concept of Paradigm
Dudley Shapere, University of Chicago
philosopher of science, wrote a critical review of
Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions in the Philosophical Review (July 1964), and shortly later he wrote a
critique of the philosophies of both Kuhn and
Feyerabend in "Meaning and Scientific
Change" in Mind
and Cosmos (ed. R.G. Colodny, 1966). Unlike the
criticisms of Popper and Feyerabend, which are
principally directed at Kuhn's new concept of the
aim of science, Shapere's criticism is directed at
Kuhn's semantical views, and particularly at Kuhn's
thesis of pre-articulate meaning set forth in the
concept of paradigm.
He argues that Kuhn's concept of paradigm is
so vague as to be of questionable explanatory value,
and he also rejects the relativism he finds in the
concept of incommensurability.
Shapere finds particularly perplexing Kuhn's
thesis that paradigms cannot be formulated
adequately or articulated completely.
He objects that if all that can be said about
paradigms and scientific development, can and must
be said only in terms of what are mere abstractions
from paradigms, as Kuhn maintains, then it is
difficult to see what is gained by appealing to the
notion of a paradigm.
He notes that in most of the cases Kuhn
discusses, the articulated theory is doing the job
that Kuhn assigns to the paradigm, yet in Kuhn's
thesis the theory is not the same as the paradigm.
Shapere says that Kuhn discusses the theory
in these cases, because it is as near as he can get
in words to the inexplicable paradigm.
He therefore asks how can historians know
that they agree in their identification of the
paradigms in historical episodes, and so determine
that the same paradigm persists through a long
sequence of such episodes. Where, he asks, does one draw the line between different
paradigms and different articulations of the same
paradigms? On
the one hand it is too easy to identify a paradigm,
and on the other hand it is not easy to determine in
a particular case what is supposed to have been the
paradigm in that case.
The inarticulate status of the paradigm makes
individuation of the paradigm problematic. Shapere concludes that in Kuhn's theory anything that allows
science to accomplish anything at all can be part of
or otherwise somehow involved with a paradigm, with
the result that the explanatory value of this
concept of paradigm is suspect.
He maintains that this idea of shared
paradigms which are purportedly behind historically
observed common factors that guide scientific
research for a period of years, appears to be
guaranteed not so much by a close examination of
actual historical cases, as by the breadth of
definition of this term "paradigm".
He furthermore questions whether such
paradigms even exist, since the existence of
similarities among theories does not imply the
existence of a common paradigm of which the similar
theories are incomplete articulations.
Shapere thus rejects what he calls the
mystique of the single paradigm.
In addition to criticizing Kuhn's concept of
paradigm, Shapere also criticizes Kuhn’s thesis of
incommensurability.
He maintains that Kuhn offers no clear
analysis of meaning, and therefore no clear analysis
of meaning change.
The principal problem that he finds with the
incommensurability thesis advocated both by Kuhn and
by Feyerabend is that it destroys the possibility of
comparing theories on any grounds whatsoever.
He asks: if the incommensurable paradigms
differ in all respects including the facts and the
problem itself, then how can they disagree?
Why do scientists accept one of them as
better than the other?
Neither Kuhn nor Feyerabend in his view
succeeds in providing any extratheoretical basis for
comparing and for judging theories and paradigms.
The result he says is a historical
relativism. Shapere
proposes a resolution.
He notes that the thesis of
incommensurability requires that two expressions or
sets of expressions must either have precisely the
same meaning or else they must be utterly and
completely different.
He proposes what he calls a middle ground by
altering this rigid notion of meaning.
He proposes that meanings may be similar,
such that they may be comparable in some respects
even as they are different in other respects, and
thus may be said to have degrees
of likeness and difference.
Kuhn
Replies
In "Reflections on My Critics" in Criticism
and the Growth of Knowledge Kuhn replies to his
critics. In
these replies he distances himself from the
sociologists while still affirming the sociological
character of his theory of science.
He minimizes the differences between himself
and Popper while still affirming the uncritical
attitude in normal science.
And he differentiates his views on
incommensurability from those of Feyerabend, and
also explains how a multiplicity of theories emerges
in the crisis period without Feyerabend's principle
of proliferation.
Firstly Kuhn distances himself from the
sociologists. He
states that in this matter he agrees with Popper; he
says the received theories of sociology and
psychology are weak reeds from which to weave a
philosophy of science, and he adds that his own work
no more relies on current sociological theory than
does Popper's.
But he still maintains that his theory of
science is intrinsically sociological, because
whatever scientific progress may be, it is necessary
to account for it by examining the nature of the
scientific group, discovering what it values and
what it disdains.
Scientists must make decisions.
They must decide what statements to make
unfalsifiable by fiat
and which ones will not be considered unfalsifiable. Using probability theory they must decide upon some threshold
below which statistical evidence will be held to be
inconsistent with theory.
They must decide when a research programme is
progressive in spite of anomalies, and when it has
become degenerative due to them.
He states that answers to such questions
require a sociological type of analysis, because
they are ideological commitments that scientists
must share, if their enterprise is to be successful.
So, the unit of investigation is not the
individual scientist but rather the nonpathological
normal scientific group.
He adds that while group behavior is affected
decisively by the shared commitments, individuals
will choose differently due to their distinctive
personalities, education, and prior patterns of
professional research, and that these individual
considerations are the province of individual
psychology. And
he says that he agrees with Popper in rejecting any
role for individual psychology in philosophy of
science.
Kuhn also addresses what Feyerabend called
the ambiguity of presentation, the ambiguity between
the descriptive and the prescriptive.
He replies that his book should be read in
both ways, because a theory of science that explains
how and why science works, must necessarily have
implications for the way in which scientists should
behave, if their enterprise is to flourish.
He states that if some social scientists have
gotten the idea that they can improve the status of
their field by firstly legislating agreement on
fundamentals and then turning to puzzle solving,
they have misunderstood him.
Kuhn states that maturity comes to those who
know how to wait, because a field gains maturity
when it has achieved a theory and technique that
satisfy four conditions that he sets forth.
(And it might be noted parenthetically that
the practices recommended in Kuhn's four conditions
are quite different from the practices prevailing in
Romantic sociology, which aims at interpretative
understanding).
Those four conditions are as follows:
(1)
Popper's demarcation criterion must apply,
such that concrete predictions emerge from the
practice of the field.
(2)
Predictive success must be consistently
achieved for some subclass of the phenomena
considered by the field.
(3)
The predictive technique must have roots in
the theory, which explains their limited success,
and which suggests means for their improvement in
both scope and precision.
(4)
Finally the improvement in predictive
technique must be a challenging task demanding high
talent and dedication.
The statement of these four conditions leads
to Kuhn's defense of his normal science thesis. He states that these conditions are tantamount to a good
scientific theory, and he maintains that with such a
theory in hand the time for criticism and theory
proliferation has past. The scientists' objectives, then, are to extend the range and
precision of the match between existing experiment
and theory, and to eliminate conflicts both between
the different theories employed in their work and
between the ways in which a single theory is used in
different applications.
These are the types of puzzles that
constitute the principal activity of normal science.
And Kuhn adds that the difference between him
and Popper on this issue of criticism is only one of
emphasis.
Kuhn then takes up the topic of semantic
incommensurability that he used to explain the
communication breakdown occurring during
revolutionary science, and he also discusses the
topics of irrationality in theory choice and of
historical relativism that his critics find implied
in the incommensurability thesis.
Firstly he notes that his thesis is that the
communication problem is not one of complete
breakdown, and that partial communication occurs.
Nevertheless Kuhn retains an
incommensurability thesis.
He says that a point-by-point comparison of
two successive theories demands a language into
which at least the empirical consequences of both
theories can be translated without loss or change,
and he denies that there exists such a
theory-independent, semantically neutral observation
language to enable such a comparison.
He states that Popper's basic statements
function as if they have this neutral character.
He joins Feyerabend in stating that there is
no neutral observation language, because in
translating from one theory to another, the
constituent words change their meanings or
conditions of applicability in subtle ways.
But Kuhn states that to him incommensurable
does not mean incomparable, and in this respect he
departs from Feyerabend's incommensurability thesis.
In his view the fact that translation exists,
suggests that recourse is available to scientists
who hold incommensurable theories.
His explanation for the fact that
communication is only partial and that translation
is difficult, is given in terms of his concept of
paradigm. The
paradigm functions as an example that enables the
scientist to recognize similar cases without having
to articulate or to characterize the similarity
relations explicitly in a generalization. He states that the practice of normal science depends
on a learned ability to group objects and situations
into similarity classes, which are primitive in the
sense that the grouping of objects is done without
supplying an answer to the question, similar with
respect to what?
In scientific revolutions some of the
similarity relations change, such that objects that
were grouped in a set are regrouped into different
subsets than before.
The example given by Kuhn of grouped objects
is the sun, the moon and the stars that were
regrouped in the transition from the Ptolemaic to
the Copernican celestial theory.
And it may be noted that Feyerabend does not
consider the transition to the Copernican celestial
theory to be a case of semantic incommensurability.
Partial communication occurs, because in such
a redistribution of similarity sets, two men whose
discourse had previously proceeded with full
understanding, may suddenly find themselves
responding to the same stimulus with incompatible
descriptions or generalizations. Kuhn maintains that
scientists experiencing communication breakdown can
discover by continued discourse the areas where
their disagreement occurs, and what the other person
would see and say, when presented with a stimulus to
which his visual and verbal response would be
different. With his theses of partial communication
and of incommensurability-with-comparability, Kuhn
believes that he can escape his critics' claims that
his views of theory choice are irrational and that
he is a historical relativist.
He still maintains that there is an element
of conversion in theory choice, because in the
absence of a semantically neutral observation
language the choice of a new theory is a decision to
adopt a different language, and to deploy it in a
correspondingly different world.
In a debate over theory choice neither party
has access to an argument, which is compelling like
logical or mathematical proofs. But their recourse to persuasion is for good reasons, such as
accuracy, scope, simplicity, or fruitfulness.
These good reasons are the group's shared
values, but not all scientists in the community
apply these values in the same way. Consequently there will be variability that occasions
revolutions. This
is Kuhn's answer to Feyerabend's principal
criticism: No special principle of theory
proliferation need be invoked to explain the
transition to crisis and revolution, because
unanimity of values will nonetheless produce the
multiplicity of views that brings on the transition
from normal to revolutionary science.
Variability in the application of uniform
values produces variability in theories during
normal science.
Kuhn,
Normal Science, and the Academic Sociologists
Feyerabend’s comments about sociologists’
uncritical embracing of Kuhn’s views are well
based. While
Kuhn faced a veritable fusillade from philosophers
of science, he was received with unrestrained
euphoria by American academic sociologists.
Monsieur Jourdain, the
parvenu in Moliere's comedy, Le
Bourgeois Gentilhomme, had aspired to write
prose, and was delightedly surprised when he was
told that he had been speaking prose for more than
forty years without knowing anything about it.
Moliere's play has its analogue in
contemporary American academic sociology save for
the absence of any comedy.
The prevailing opinion among researchers in
the more mature scientific professions is that
sociology is merely a pretentious parvenu
with a literature of platitudes expressed in
jargon. And
American academic sociologists have longed to
demonstrate the manifest scientific progress that
the more mature scientific professions have often
exhibited in their histories. Consequently like
Monsieur Jordain, the American sociologists were
delightedly surprised when Kuhn told them that they
have been theorizing about the conditions for
scientific progress for years without knowing
anything about it.
Sociologists did not have to be told how to
practice Kuhn's doctrine of enforced consensus; it
had long been an accepted practice endemic to their
profession. They
had only to be told that social conformism is a new
philosophy of science that produces progress.
Specifically he told them that his
sociological thesis of normal science describes the
conditions for the transition of social sciences
from preparadigm status to mature status.
In several places in his writings Kuhn
maintains that the social sciences are immature
sciences, because they do not have consensus
paradigms that enable them to pursue the
puzzle-solving type of research that characterizes
normal science.
In his "Postscript" he states that
the transition to maturity deserves fuller
discussion from those who are concerned with the
development of contemporary social science.
Not coincidentally none were more concerned
with such a transition than the professionally
insecure and institutionally backward American
academic sociologists.
And remarkably as the custodians and
practitioners of the theory of consensus and
conformity, none have thought themselves more
professionally and institutionally suited for such
discussion. Thus
the irony: notwithstanding the mediocrity of their
own science’s accomplishments, sociologists
deluded themselves into believing that they are the
world’s experts in the philosophy and practices of
basic scientific research.
A paradigmatic example of Kuhn's influence on
sociologists is represented by Hagstrom's The Scientific Community (1965).
This book written by a sociologist and
referenced later by Kuhn in support of his own
views, is a study of how the forces of socialization
by professional education and of social control by
colleagues within a scientific community, operate to
produce conformity to scientific norms and values.
Just as Kuhn attributed institutional status
to the prevailing paradigm, so too, Hagstrom
identifies the norms and values of science with
currently accepted substantive views, and therefore
says that substantive disputes in a scientific
community are a type of social disorganization.
"Disorganization" is as pejorative
a term in sociology as "depression" is in
economics. Hagstrom
identifies his theory as a functionalist theory, and
in functionalist sociological theory social
disorganization is viewed as symptomatic of a
pathological condition known as institutional
disintegration. He mentions two types of
social-control sanctions that operate in the
scientific community to produce the requisite
conformity to the norms and values.
They are firstly refusal to publish papers in
the professional journals and secondly denial of
opportunity for occupational advancement.
Kuhn and Hagstrom are a mutual admiration
society unto themselves.
Hagstrom acknowledges Kuhn's influence in his
preface, and he references and quotes Kuhn in
several places in the book, particularly where Kuhn
discusses professional education in mature sciences.
And Kuhn in turn later references Hagstrom's
book in "Second Thoughts" and in the
"Postscript" in support of his theses.
Kuhn's influence on sociologists was
manifested in the sociological journals also.
A short time after Kuhn's 1962 book there
appeared a new sociological journal,
Sociological Methods and Research.
In a statement of policy reprinted in every
issue for many years the editors state that the
journal is devoted to sociology as a cumulative
empirical science, and they describe the journal as
one that is highly focused on the assessment of the
scientific status of sociology.
One of the distinctive characteristics of
normal science in Kuhn's theory is that it is
cumulative, such that it can demonstrate progress. And in "Editorial Policies and Practices among Leading
Journals in Four Scientific Fields" in the Sociological Quarterly (1978) Janice M. Beyer reports her findings
from a survey of the editors of several academic
journals. These
interesting findings reveal three significant
differences between the editorial policies of the
journals of the physics profession and those of the
sociological profession.
They are:
(1) The acceptance rate for papers submitted
to sociological journals is thirteen percent, while
the rate for physics journals is sixty-five percent;
(2) the percent of accepted papers requiring
extensive revision and then resubmitted to referees
is forty-three percent for sociological journals and
twenty-two percent for physics journals; and (3) the
percent of accepted papers requiring no revision is
ten percent for sociological journals and forty-six
percent for physics journals.
The scientist who is not a sociologist may
reasonably wonder either whether sociologists are
really as professionally ill-prepared to contribute
to a professional scientific literature as these
findings would indicate, or whether there is
something Orwellian in this enforced practice of
extensive revision of purportedly scientific
findings as a condition for publication.
In fact both options obtain.
But Beyer explains her findings in terms of
Kuhn's thesis of normal science, and attributes the
reported differences in editorial practices to
differences in paradigm development.
She states that sciences having highly
developed paradigms use universalist criteria for
scientific criticism, and she defines
“universalist” the belief that scientific
judgments should be based on considerations of
scientific merit, where "merit" in her
text is described as conformity with a consensus
paradigm. Understood in this manner, universalism is just an imposed
uniformity that is indifferent to the distinction
between contrary evidence and the contrary opinions
of author and referees.
Ironically the outcome of the self-conscious
attempt to make sociology a mature science
practicing normal science with a consensus paradigm
was something quite different than what Kuhn's
philosophy had described.
Kuhn's philosophy described a consensus
paradigm that is empirical, so that it can produce
anomalies which initially are ignored, but which
eventually accumulate and spawn revolutionary
alternative theories.
What actually happens in sociology, however,
is that the sociologists impose social controls upon
the members of their profession, in order to enforce
conformity not to an empirical theory, but to a
philosophy of science.
The philosophy of science that the
sociologists enforce upon their membership is the
Romanticist philosophy introduced into American
sociology by Talcott Parsons.
This philosophy, which Parsons brought to
Harvard University from the University of Heidelberg
in Germany, where he was influenced by the views of
Max Weber, was to supply the philosophical
foundations for his functionalist sociology, or at
least for his own peculiar variation of
functionalism.
Even though his functionalist sociology is
now passe, Parson's Romantic philosophy of science
continues to haunt American academic sociology.
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