‘The Structure of Scientific Revolutions’
by Thomas S Kuhn
“ History,if viewed, as a repository for more than anecdote or chronology ,could produce a decisive transformation in the image of science by which we are now possessed”
This opening sentence of the book says it all. A seminal treatise on historiography of science, ‘The Structure’ ranks for its sheer intellectual brilliance, perceptiveness and transformative influence with Adam Smith’s ‘The Wealth of Nations’ , Karl Marx’s ‘Das Capital’ , Sigmund Freud’s ‘The Interpretation of Dreams’ , to name a few.
Published in 1962 at the height of the Cold War, the horrendous ‘mushroom’ cloud images of atomic explosion over Hiroshima and Nagasaki still fresh in public memory, and the world perilously close to a nuclear war following the Cuban missile crisis, it ,in the following 25 years, became one of the most cited books, selling 6,50,000 copies. By the time its 50th anniversary edition went to print in 2012, this number had swelled to over 1.5 million. For a non-textbook scientific disquisition that figure is phenomenal. Obviously, its readership crossed the boundaries of academia by many a mile to catch the popular fancy.
Some words and phrases from popular books end up as buzzwords within their subject discipline- Adam Smith’s ‘ the invisible hand’ , Marx’s ‘dialectical materialism’ ,Schumpeter’s ‘creative destruction- a few manage to enter popular parlance, and still fewer become so current that the originator’s name is lost to public memory. Who associates Dickens with the phrase,’devil-may-care’, or Chris Lewis with ,’chortle’, or Capek with ‘robot’? ‘Paradigm shift’ is one among them. I often hear the plaintive that 2014 marks a paradigm shift in Indian polity, now I know where it came from.
Kuhn , baptised in theoretical physics, got associated with a history of science project as a graduate student. Somewhat disillusioned with its methodological approaches, he was drawn to re-examining the philosophical moorings of science upon which it is practiced. From this churn of theory , history and philosophy floated ‘The Structure’ - an introspective, Eureka moment for the practitioners of science.
By Kuhn’s exegesis, at any given time there is a ‘constellation’ populated by scientific beliefs, values, theories to which scientists in a subject discipline stand firmly committed- the prevailing scientific ‘paradigm’, a shared view. Ongoing scientific activity-‘Normal Science’-engages in its articulation, widening the scope of its applicability, tackling puzzling questions arising from its application, and clearing up grey areas in the theory and phenomenological observations -in short, ‘puzzle-solving’ acts, paradigm dictated. At some point, some outcomes fail to match the paradigm derived expectations-‘anomalies’. Competing conceptual formulations that supposedly cohere with these anomalies are then vigorously espoused. Uncertainty, turmoil, and a state of flux ensues-‘crisis’. Finally, a brainwave, a sudden flash of brilliance, and lo ! behold , there is a conception and its exposition that ties up all loose ends and makes the anomalous the expected. Slowly it wins substantial converts and assumes the mantle of reigning paradigm, others pass into oblivion .
A scientific Revolution is ,therefore, a ‘paradigm shift’. It takes place only after the epitaph on its predecessor has been inscribed. It has a sequential structure- normal science, puzzle- solving, anomaly, crisis, new paradigm. It is as if the world has transformed. Words change their meanings. Where Aristotle saw a swinging stone ,Galileo a pendulum; Ptolemy believed a geocentric universe, Copernicus a heliocentric one. To Newton a simultaneous event remains so whatever the observer’s state of motion but to Einstein simultaneity was relative to the state of motion. With many more familiar examples Kuhn amply demonstrates that transformative advancement in science is not only episodic and Darwinian, but also a substantive change in world view. The book ,thus, broke its umbilical cord with tradition which viewed scientific progress as essentially linear. Noviciates in science get a misleading impression from textbooks they read, namely, that the fortress of science has been built brick by brick, each of its heroes contributing his bit. Where Kuhn saw graveyards, traditionalists saw brick kilns. No wonder, the book had many detractors and carping critics. So many that he was forced to attach a long post script clarifying points raised and answering his critics.
Kuhn’s iconoclasm extends in another direction. With admirable panache historiographers of science had curated, chiselled an image of science since antiquity that showed it progressing towards some hitherto undiscovered ‘universal truth and order in nature’. Kuhn, somewhat, sullied that image by asserting that progress in science is only, ‘a progression towards less adequate conception and validation with the world’.
Will there be another ‘Kuhnian’ paradigm shift in fundamental physics? Today, Biotechnology ,Biochemistry, Informatics are the new darlings: while fundamental physics is saddled with two intrinsically ‘incommensurate’ paradigms; gravity, a weltanschauun (world view) of nature’s mystique in sight ,aided or unaided ; and quantum mechanics, sub-atomic entities inferable only from traces left behind in bubble chambers or the like. But the community is hopeful. Soon the stage will be set up for an Einstein or Planck to create a paradigm shift in which gravity and quanta will assume different meanings in a radically different conceptual framework ; for example, space to Newton was three dimensional and isotropic , in Einstein’s world space is multi-dimensional and curved near Black Holes. What worldview of nature will this new paradigm bring in its tow ? Let’s keep our fingers crossed.
I was wonderstruck at Kuhn’s stupendously perceptive understanding of the subject; and his facility in encapsulating a broad sweep of turning points in science’s conceptual formulations since antiquity, splicing it with the philosophical bases in plain words, shorn of abstract scientific rigmarole, all of it just within 170 pages. Rarely have I read a book page by page, with deliberative pauses for fathoming, masticating, and ingesting the drift and logic of its disquisitions . At the end of it - Bodhi Enlightenment ! A paradigm shift in my upper chamber.
For the serious, inquisitive reader, a must-read in lifetime. In the introductory reappraisal (standing in for a foreword), Ian Hacking, after a good deal of hemming and hawing is forced to concede that the book, “really did change the image of science by which we are now possessed “. FOREVER, he reasserts .
Rightly so !
