Paradigms and Barriers: How Habits of Mind Govern Scientific Beliefs

by Howard Margolis

Book Overview

In Paradigms and Barriers Howard Margolis offers an
innovative interpretation of Thomas S. Kuhn's landmark idea
of "paradigm shifts," applying insights from cognitive
psychology to the history and philosophy of science.
Building upon the arguments in his acclaimed Patterns,
Thinking, and Cognition, Margolis suggests that the
breaking down of particular habits of mind--of critical
"barriers"--is key...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0226505235
• ISBN13: 9780226505237
• Release Date: August 1993
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Length: 275 Pages
• Weight: 0.88 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

The barrier theory: a new thesis about scientific discovery

Why is it that at some periods of history it took hundreds of years to discover and important new law while all empirical data had long been available to logically infer the law or theory? This major question in the history and philosophy of science is being tackled by the barrier theory. The highly original work of Howard Margolis argues for the bold and strong thesis that revolutions in science mainly consist in surmounting a single conceptual barrier that prevents the emergence of a new theory. Margolis has previously published Patterns, Thinking and Cognition in which he argued that pattern recognition is all there is to cognition. In his defence of the barrier theory, he starts from the cognitive pattern he calls "habits of mind". These habits of minds govern our cognitive processes and are similar to what Polanyi called "tacit knowledge". Habits of mind guide our critical intuitions within a community and are therefore constitutive of a paradigm. A barrier is an entrenched habit of mind that can block a cognitive breakthrough in science. The conceptual distance between a prevailing view and a conflicting new proposal determines whether or not a paradigm shift within a scientific community takes place. Margolis illustrates with historical examples how overcoming these barriers was critical for the emergence of new ideas in the seventeenth century. Even if one doubts the core idea of the barrier theory, Margolis' exposition on some of the major discoveries of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are convincing and truly original. In his account on the Copernican revolution Margolis shows that the critical barrier to overcome was not that of a stationary earth, as sometimes suggested, but the step to a heliocentric model with nested spheres. Using recently discovered notes of Copernicus on the Alphonsine tables, Margolis shows how logically simple it was to step from geocentric to heliocentric astronomy, but - as is typical with habits of minds - conceptually very difficult. Also his treatment of the emergence of probability theory is highly original. All intuitions for a probability theory were present for centuries, but the habit of mind was to perceive probability as a result of a bargaining process, like a fair price for the risks involved. The breakthrough of Pascal and Fermat was to attach a single quantifiable number to the concept of probability that was not considered to be countable. Once this missing concept was introduced of usefully attaching numbers to comparative values even if there is nothing immediately to count, a theory of probability could be established. Other case studies treated by Margolis are the overthrow of the phlogiston theory in the eighteenth century and the dispute between Hobbes and Boyle about the air pump. The conceptual barrier to view phlogiston as the negative for oxygen was removed by Cavendish's weight experiments with a mixture of inflammable air (hydrogen) and dephlogisticated air (oxygen) produc