Dr. Otter began his presentation on the interpretation of the history of science by setting up the context in which Thomas Kuhn wrote, “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions”. By emphasizing the shape of history, we can see how history lead to the modern world of scientific thinking. Science was used as a weapon to fight superstition during the Enlightenment, and in the 19th century science was popularized through university, where the science was equated to progress. The 20th century saw lots of texts that argued the scientific revolution was the most important thing to happen in history, one even comparing it to the coming of Christ. The Scientific Revolution can be simplified to the point in which society became dynamic; science became distinguished from pseudoscience; and error distinguished from truth.
I really enjoyed the discussion on limitations of the definition of fact. While we have been trained to accept facts as truth, there is the suggestion that facts are actually an agreement to stop exploring an idea. This implies that society can open any truth and destroy it, since facts are socially produced. An example of this is climate change. American society has just chosen not to accept climate change as a fact yet.
The basis of Kuhn’s work is the idea that science cannot function without paradigms, a set of collective ideas that scientists agree on. Normal science is performing experiments that maintain the current paradigm, sometimes producing evidence that does not fit. While these anomalies are usually ignored or labeled as pseudoscience, an accumulation of anomalies throws existing paradigms into doubt. Paradigm shifts occur when there are enough anomalies to replace an old paradigm, but the shift temporarily splits science into two- those holding on to the older paradigm, and those in favor of the new one. Kuhn notes that during these splits, the answer cannot be found in the natural world because people are seeing the same thing through different lenses. Dr. Otter described the feeling of arguing a new paradigm to those who refuse to see anything but the old way as incommensurable. I liked Dr. Otter’s observation that people who initiate paradigm shifts tend to be young and on the outside, or those who are less consumed with the traditional perspective.
Kuhn disagreed with early historians of science who attempted to linearize science. He concludes that truths just become replaced by other truths which better explain anomalies. New paradigms do not have to explain everything; they just needs to explain more than the prior paradigm. Overall, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this presentation, and I liked how Dr. Otter mentioned that there is more than truth to paradigms. People are emotionally, socially, and financially connected to them.