7. Christopher Otter

I enjoyed Dr.Otter’s talk as not only did it teach me about how science changes through the ages, but helped me understand the Kuhn readings on a much better level. I thought a really interesting point from the lecture was how facts can be destroyed if society believes so. After hearing that statement, my first reaction was that the statement was not what it seemed as when something is named a fact, it has evidence that follows a logic to prove it. But after thinking about this statement, I realized its truth as that is what has happened repeatedly in history. Something could be an indisputable fact supported by mountains of evidence, but it is not deemed widely as credible unless everyone in society adheres to such a fact. One example of this would be evolution. Despite the amounts of data collected on the subject, some sub communities in the religious world disregard such findings. Resultantly, it is not considered a fact in these communities despite having actual proof to support it. Additionally, the power of the statement that facts can be destroyed by society is immense as it shows that discoveries based in fact can be forgotten. If this happens, science takes a larger amount of time to progress and perhaps some discoveries could be lost forever.

I found Dr. Christopher Otters presentation to be very interesting and helpful in understanding Kuhn’s book. One thing I liked was how he explained what exactly a paradigm was and gave some examples. We have talked about paradigms multiple times, but I never fully understood it. One definition that was given was saying it’s essentially “something that everyone is on the same page on”. Examples include plate tectonics or the periodic table. I think that explaining some of the key points from the book, like paradigm and normal science, helped me to further understand the book and was very useful.

It is weird to think about the first use of the word scientist. I never thought about how that originated but I guess it originated from the term philosophy and then became a real discipline in the 1900s which in time, that is not that long ago. I thought it was also interesting that the scientific revolution was viewed with the same importance as Jesus Christ (Butterfield).

It is also difficult for me to wrap my head around the idea that there will always be more paradigm shifts. Fro instance, at one point everyone thought the world was flat at one point. What if everything we believe right now is shown to be false in 100 years from now? It blows my mind. It is also interesting that these new ideas cannot exactly be proven so when a new idea comes around, it just has to sound better than the last one and then be accepted by most of the population. There is no absolute truth to be discovered. It will always be just the accepted opinion based on experiment.

I enjoyed Dr. Otter’s presentation further discussing Kuhn’s work. I appreciated him explaining the book in simpler terms and concepts to help the class better understand the meaning behind the words. It was a very interesting presentation that focused on the paradigm shift and evolution of science throughout time. It is quite fascinating that particular shifts change the entire course of science and the way people view certain topics. This results in changing views and the experiments conducted. It makes me contemplate what shifts will happen in the future related to relevant science now. There has been a large technology boom within the past 20 years or so. I wonder if a certain discovery will affect the entire technology industry. It also makes me think of how accurate the information we are currently studying. The concept of paradigm shifts in general is thought-provoking, and Dr. Otter helped better showcase the interesting points of it and Kuhn’s ideas.

I really enjoyed how professor Otter gave a more easy to understand explanation of what exactly Kuhn was trying to convey about paradigms. I found it particularly interesting that he explains how every truth we know about isn’t really a truth, but normalized observations accepted by most of the population. He also mentioned a good point about finances, in which many scientists will not get funding to do research that goes against a certain paradigm, since the investors will not see any gain. This was interesting because in order for a paradigm shift to occur, one would need to conduct research that goes completely against what everyone thinks the “truth” is. I guess that explains why Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier was able to conduct much of his research, since he already came from such a wealthy background. This is also the case with many other famous scientists, such as Darwin, etc. This is also a side note, but I think that it is very interesting that Isaac Newton literally considered himself as a divine being, which I never knew before.

I found Dr. Otter’s discussion on the interpretation of the history of science very interesting. I was able to more fully understand the ideas that Kuhn discussed in his book based on the background that was presented. The stages of history in terms of progress ad decline were talked about pertaining to times of paradigm shifts. The 18th century enlightenment showed radically progressive uses of science and started to marvel in the ideas that had been previously created. Following in the 19th century, science became popularized through academics and the term “scientist” was coined. Then, the 20th century focused heavily on the scientific revolution and its impact on the society and how there was a dynamic shift from error to truth with the addition of science. Ludwick Flek was a scientist that developed “collective thinking,” that discussed facts are socially produced and can be destroyed if a society decides to do this.  From this, we talked about Kuhn who focuses on paradigms, which are collective thoughts, beliefs and experiments that form a collective consensus of a group of scientists at a point in time. Without these paradigms, all experiments would be seen as valid because there would be nothing to compare them to. All of the examples that Dr. Otter mentioned have been discussed in class, but we also discussed anomalies of these paradigms. There are always facts that don’t fit in paradigms , which can lead to paradigm shifts after a period of time. However, it is hard to change an consensus that has already been made. We related this to the fact that most paradigm causing thoughts have been presented by younger individuals that are more open to change. Overall, Kuhn uses his novel to rebel against the way that history of science was viewed. History of science isn’t linear and paradigms are a feature of modern science that will always be seeing new implications and be changing with new ideas and thought provoking individuals.

I thought Dr. Otter’s talk was interesting as he helped break down Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions into simpler terms. It’s interesting to think about how much science has evolved in the last sentury, and how these paradigm shifts involved distinguishing science from pseudoscience, and error to truth. I found it particularly interesting when he touched on the fact that many scientists have committed suicide as a result of a paradigm shift. I can only imagine that feeling of hopelessness when all the work your whole life has revolved around has been tucked away as wrong. This all also makes me wonder if anything we are studying today is accurate. Many beliefs accepted and reproduced through normal science were later to be proven as wrong, so I’m curious what theories in our world today may be proven wrong in 50 years from now!

Dr. Otter gave an interesting discussion on paradigm shifts with a focus on themes from Thomas Kuhn’s book, The Structure of  Scientific Revolutions. Kuhn’s book is a particularly challenging book to understand as it brings to light a new vocabulary with complex ideas. Dr. Otter gave valuable insight on these complex ideas that Kuhn lays out. One of the main points that Dr. Otter explained was the idea of a paradigm shift and what it is described as in Kuhn’s book. Dr. Otter also went on to explain how Kuhn describes the evolution of science as a nonlinear path, but rather one with high and lows in scientific discovery and achievement. I thought it was interesting how Dr. Otter was able to bring down Kuhn’s ideas to a more understandable level. I found it difficult to comprehend everything that Kuhn had written. However, I was able to understand the general ideas that Kuhn was getting at. It was extremely helpful though for Dr. Otter to come in, as he was able to fill in some of the gaps to the reading that I had when I first read Kuhn’s first couple of chapters.

Chris Otter was an amazing presenter as his focus was not on a slide deck, but rather what he had to say. While I have read some of Kuhn’s book, I understand very little of what was intended. Otter did an excellent job of filling that gap, although I wish I came to the presentation more prepared. He discussed not only Kuhn’s book and ideas, but the history of the history of science that led to Kuhn’s book. This was by far the most interesting part of the presentation as I had not heard things like this before and the organizers of the class had done an excellent job of mentioning and discussing EVERY person or idea that Otter brought up in relation to paradigm shifts.

One thing that really stuck with me is the idea that the age of paradigm shifts could be over. I don’t know how much I agree with this that I think we live in a society, at least the scientific community, bases theory off of recorded data. With the current ideas and theories we have, there are few anomalies that I can think of other than in physics where Newtons and Einsteins Law’s break down in extreme circumstances. With this being said, people are getting paid to try and find a solution. These people are actively participating in research where they explore outside of the current paradigm trying to find a new one. I don’t think that the age of paradigms will be over, but they will be few and far between as we begin to understand more and more of the universe.