– By Byron Jennings, (Ex) Theorist (or is it: once a theorist, always a theorist…) and Project Coordinator
Thomas Kuhn (1922 – 1996) began his career as a physicist but then, as a post-doc, went over to the dark side and became a philosopher. It is for his work on the dark side that he became famous. Normally one assumes that when a scientist starts doing philosophy it is a sign of senility, but in his case it was too early in his career and his insights were actually useful (Yes, philosophy can be useful). His main contribution, in my opinion, was his introduction of the idea of the paradigm. A paradigm is the set of interlocking assumptions and methodologies that define a field of study. It provides the foundation for all work in the field and a common language for discourse. It is the fundamental model for the field and in historical studies is sometimes referred to as the controlling narrative.
If you’ve ever heard the phrase ‘paradigm change,’ you would think that all paradigms do is change. But the idea of the paradigm is actually subversive – it helped undermine the “received view” of what science is and still undermines experimentalist’s attempts to eliminate theory (Which can’t be done, by the way!). Full disclosure: I am, or rather was, a theorist. Administration is even farther to the dark side than philosophy.
The concept of paradigm was introduced in contradistinction to the ideas of positivism that defined the “received view”. The positivists tried to work directly with observations and eliminate all metaphysics or model dependence. Kuhn, on the other hand, claimed the observations themselves are theory laden or model dependent. You cannot, as a matter of principle, eliminate the metaphysics because the observation, or at least their interpretation, depends on the theory, model, or paradigm. The paradigm sets the frameworks that gives meaning to the observations and frames the very questions that are considered worthy of addressing. Examples of paradigms would be Aristotelian physics, classical physics, the standard model of particle physics, or the modern synthesis of evolution.
While paradigms do more than change but they do indeed change and when they do all—oops I cannot say that!—all heck breaks loose. Things one thought one knew and could rely on suddenly go poof. This going ‘poof’ was what the positivists tried and failed to get around by eliminating the models and working directly with the observations.
As Einstein (I like name dropping) pointed out, when paradigms change, it tends to be the most central parts of the previous paradigm that are eliminated. In Aristotelian physics, it was the fixed earth and the perfect heavens that Galileo destroyed with his telescope. Classical mechanics is built on Euclidean three-dimensional space and well-defined trajectories. Special and general relativity eliminated Euclidean geometry, and string theory, if correct, means space is not three-dimensional. Quantum mechanics eliminated the well-defined trajectories. This still causes some people sleepless nights but does not bother me since most of the time I do not know where I am or where I am going anyway. Evolution wrecked havoc with the concept of species. Before continental drift was accepted, a central concept of geology was the fixed continents. The examples are endless.
A side effect of this is that one cannot depend on the contents of the present theories or models to have any direct connection with reality. The ether (electromagnetism), caloric (heat), phlogiston (fire), and mal air (medicine) that at one time were essential parts of the understanding of how the universe works were eliminated by new improved models. There is no guarantee that the contents of the current models will not be similarly eliminated. Maybe we will find quarks disappearing or more likely, time, since it is apparently more fundamental.
So what is science and what is it good for if the basic concepts keep changing? Well now, that is a good question.
– to be continued –
Tags: BC, Byron Jennings, Einstein, Kuhn, Paradigm, Philosophy, TRIUMF, Vancovuer, What is science
“So what is science and what is it good for if the basic concepts keep changing? Well now, that is a good question.” The big fun is not in validation, it is in falsification. If you crave discovery, do not look where orthodox theory is brightest. Look where heterodox observation is most likely. Cisplatin for treating cancer began as a study of electric field effects on cultured cells. Had the biologist known about Parylene-C to insulate metal electrodes against corroion, or used Ebonex or boron-doped diamond, no Cisplatin. He caught all sorts of heck for allocating resources outside his grant.
Grant funding is a business plan. Grant funding has a budget spreadsheet, a PERT chart, DCF/ROI, and zero risk. Grant funding obsesses on what is measurable instead of promoting what is important. Management is rewarded for enforcing process not creating product. All discovery is then insubordination. You cannot manage discovery, you can only manage to end it – Bell Labs into Lucent Technologies into dust.
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/reality.png
The universe wants to be discovered.
“The R&D Function” Harvard Business Review 61(6) 195 (1983)
“As Einstein (I like name dropping) pointed out, when paradigms change, it tends to be the most central parts of the previous paradigm that are eliminated.”
And conversely (as far as I can now with my mathematical rather than physical formation), there are often sophistications or ways of calculating that one can acquire only with some application in studying ancient theories and that are necessary to know in order to fully understand the new ones (I mostly think of classical and analytical mechanics relatively to quantum mechanics and relativity, but the same would be true from early twenty century theory to new speculative ones). In some way (and as we are now speaking of philosophy) one could think of the hegelian “aufhebung”, which is at the same time abolishment, conservation and advancement. Even if the aim of Hegel was more of thinking about the history of philosophy than of the history of sciences (and even if in his own field he often tends to be a bit too totalizing) I think his theories on the subject apply pretty well to the ‘paradigm change’.
Philosophy is indeed “the dark side”. They can’t know what is wrong, so they can’t know what is correct. For every valid story, they can put up an equally valid contradicting story. It isn’t even “just so” stories, it is just – story telling. How can that be useful?
“A paradigm is the set of interlocking assumptions and methodologies that define a field of study.”
Congratulations, I have never before seen anyone actually attempt a definition of “paradigm”. It is claimed somewhere that Kuhn himself used ~ 20 different definitions at various times, as I remember it.
Still, I can’t see how it is a testable definition. What is “a field of study”, how is it “defined”?
On the face of it, paradigms change all the time, as it is enough to find a new fact – a new “assumption” as it were. How is that helpful? We can as well continue to say “facts & theories” as always.
Some nitpicks:
“The positivists tried to work directly with observations and eliminate all metaphysics or model dependence.”
This confuses philosophy with actual scientists. Scientists work without using ideas of metaphysics. But they use plenty of models!
“A side effect of this is that one cannot depend on the contents of the present theories or models to have any direct connection with reality. [...] There is no guarantee that the contents of the current models will not be similarly eliminated.”
As physicist Sean Carroll pointed out, it would be good if people knew that The Laws Underlying The Physics of Everyday Life Are Completely Understood. [His capitalization.]
Among other things it implies that testing to eliminate faulty theory converges:
“A hundred years ago it would have been easy to ask a basic question to which physics couldn’t provide a satisfying answer. “What keeps this table from collapsing?” “Why are there different elements?” “What kind of signal travels from the brain to your muscles?” But now we understand all that stuff. (Again, not the detailed way in which everything plays out, but the underlying principles.) Fifty years ago we more or less had it figured out, depending on how picky you want to be about the nuclear forces. But there’s no question that the human goal of figuring out the basic rules by which the easily observable world works was one that was achieved once and for all in the twentieth century.
You might question the “once and for all” part of that formulation, but it’s solid. Of course revolutions can always happen, but there’s every reason to believe that our current understanding is complete within the everyday realm.”
And we know that science directly connects with realism! It is a testable property built into the very foundation of mechanics, as should be expected: constrained reactions on constrained actions. [Re Deutsch, "The Fabric of Reality".]
In classical mechanics it was the basic action-reaction. In quantum mechanics it is the basic observation-observables.
Oops, I forgot the clincher:
It is a testable property built into the very foundation of mechanics, as should be expected: constrained reactions on constrained actions. [Re Deutsch, "The Fabric of Reality".] Because there is a robust external environment, not everything goes.
Originally, I did not have a definition of paradigm but my editor insisted I add one. By the way, in general, definitions are not falsifiable,
Aw man, the one time there’s a NTW made for me and I haven’t been following the blog lately. Hernandi and Barney beat me to it.