The Essential Tension: Selected Studies in Scientific Tradition and Change

by Thomas S. Kuhn

Book Overview

"Kuhn has the unmistakable address of a man, who, so far from wanting to score points, is anxious above all else to get at the truth of matters."-Sir Peter Medawar, Nature

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0226458067
• ISBN13: 9780226458069
• Release Date: December 1977
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Length: 390 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.5" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

Not much new since Structure

Almost all of these articles consist in pretty straightforward elaboration and extrapolation of the ideas in Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions. No fundamentally new ideas are introduced (although there are some trivial adjustments in terminology, which people have made too much fuss about). "The Function of Measurement in Modern Physical Science." It is an unfortunate textbook dogma to think that theories are confirmed by measurement, or, even worse, that scientific theories are constructed to fit given measurements, for the following reasons. (a) It is ambiguous what constitutes reasonable fit with data; one person's confirmation is another's refutation, as historical examples show (e.g., Ptolemy/Copernicus, etc., p. 185, and Galileo on falling bodies, pp. 193-194). We must conclude that the tables of data in science textbooks serve not to confirm the theories but to define the bounds of reasonable fit. (b) Most theories make very few measurable predictions. Therefore measurements may be indecisive (e.g., caloric and dynamical theories of heat, p. 200) or pertain only to relatively incidental aspects of the theory (e.g., relativity theory, p. 188). (c) To the extent that naive confirmation by measurement has been attempted, it has routinely rejected correct theories (e.g., Dalton on chemical composition, p. 195, Laplace on the speed of sound, p. 196) and it has turned out that "nature itself needs to be forced to yield the appropriate results" (p. 197). (d) "the road from scientific law to scientific measurement can rarely be traveled in the reverse direction" (p. 219). Successful measurements have almost exclusively been achieved where "the quantitative implications of a qualitative theory led the way" (p. 198, countless examples throughout). For these reasons, "only a miniscule fraction of even the best and most creative measurements ... are motivated by a desire to discover new quantitative regularities or to confirm old ones" (p. 187). Instead, the objective of measurement is "to improve the measure of 'reasonable agreement' characteristic of the theory in a given application and ... to open up new areas of application and establish new measurements of 'reasonable agreement' applicable to them. ... this can be fascinating and intensely rewarding work. And there is always the remote possibility that it will pay an additional dividend: something may go wrong." (p. 192). We all know how crucial anomalies can be, but even without them measurements would be valuable with respect to theory choice since "I know of no case in the development of science which exhibits a loss of quantitative accuracy as a consequence of the transition from an earlier to a later theory" (p. 213). By contrast, explanatory power has been abandoned repeatedly, even to the extent of rejecting earlier ideas as unscientific, e.g., Newton's gravity, or Lavoisier's theory which "deprived chemistry of one principal traditional function---the explanation of the qualita

Science's Greatest Historian

Thomas Kuhn's writings on the History of Science are, IMHO, the most honest, succinct, and courageous available. Nobody who considers themselves a "scientist" or Historian should pass this author by! "Science progresses, funeral by funeral." - Max Planck Dorje

A comment on Magellan's comments

In the last few lines of Magellan's "A few comments on the evolution of the philosophy", Thomas Kuhn was strongly criticized. This criticism perhaps originates from the same misunderstanding of human nature that produced Confusianism and Maxism. What is brave about Kuhn is that he dared to point out the weakness of mankind. Indeed scientists eventually accept new ideas and theories because they are closer to truth as revealed by the new experimental observations and findings. But this paradigm shift can indeed be painfully long as people first try to exhaust all the means to rescue the old paradigm. Scientists should be trained to have the ethnics of merely pursuing truth and only truth. However, as human beings (shame on them), some scientists care more about their reputation and survival than about what is true. When the majority of a community is like so, the paradigm shift indeed begins as an external process, i.e., the shift is forced upon and not voluntary.

Another beautiful mind

Kuhn's ideas are almost always insightful, sometimes brilliant, though he can be challenging and somewhat dense to read. The last point is an observation rather than a criticism. Unlike some academic writers who use a lot of jargon and unnecessarily big words to sound authoritative, Kuhn is "scholarly" in the best sense -- meticulous about detail and extremely thoughtful in his explanations. There's a lot of great stuff here, just not light reading. A collection of essays like this is especially nice because Kuhn's writings on a variety of topics can be sampled in manageable chunks of about 10 to 30 pages each. His consistent theme is how communities of scientists come to understand, test, and advance the state of knowledge in their fields of study. What makes the essays so fascinating for me is Kuhn's deft exploration of the inherent social nature of how science is done and how it moves forward. And though Kuhn is writing specifically about SCIENCE as a social endeavor, a number of the insights can be readily applied to other areas. Finally, Kuhn's analyses, insights, and critiques carry added weight because he's not writing about science as an outsider. He started out as a scientist/practitioner and it shows in the crisp way he explains and weaves scientific examples into his writing. Well worth the effort to read!

More puzzles, please...

These collected essays provide a nice framework for further investigations into Kuhn's groundbreaking 'The Structures of Scientific Revolutions.' At the forefront are the issues of writing the history of scientific disciplines. This is to be contrasted with the philosophy of science, and, to be sure, Kuhn differentiates the writing of a history from the philosophy. What this book provides are more empirical and contextual essays that serve as details to the theoretical framework of "Structures." Kuhn is and will always be a frustrating but rewarding thinker. This book is no exception.