Kuhn's philosophical troubles

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 Kuhn's philosophical troubles with actual science history¹
Mario H.OTERO
Universidad de la República, Montevideo, Uruguay


    Almost everybody knows that Thomas S.Kuhn was both an historian of science and a philosopher of science. According to him he is not, nor was, both at once. It seems that is possible for him to distinguish when he is either one. Even more, he thinks that both enterprises should be separated2 not only in his work but also in general notwithstanding the mutual fertilization between them.
    Many of us estimate very doubtful that the separation be present even in Kuhn intellectual practice3, in SSR (1970), his main and most famous work, we do not find such alleged distances.
    Concerning this question we would like to compare here some passages of his recent paper on "The trouble with the historical philosophy of science" (1992, T from now on) with others of the former one on "The relations between the history and the philosophy of science" (1968, revised in 1976; from now on, R), included in the book The essential tension (1977).
    We should remember the double autobiographical character of R, in aspects concerning Kuhn own formation and activities and his long experience in the teaching of both disciplines and in the orientation of doctoral theses.
    Even more, the last several Kuhn papers of the nineties (1991i, 1992, 1993) have also a strong autobiographical character.
    It would seem that the original position in R - not totally exempt of ambiguities - could have been broken by his practice and that in T they would appear some very surprising theses.

    1. As for T, philosophical construction seemed to be attained, in Kuhn's original generation, from observations of scientific actual behaviors. But for him that image is misleading because in that historical philosophy of science conclusions may be reached with scarse reference to real historical records. Even more, the historical perspective, following T, was in the beginning alien to the received and dominant philosophical tradition that was guided rather by the existence, or not, of a rational guarantee as a basis to affirm this or that. For Kuhn gradually the static image of the tradition became to be dynamic in the new philosophy and science began to be conceived as a developmental practice or enterprise. Even the attained new perspective could be derived from principles and not necessarily from historical records4.
 
  

"Now I think we overemphasized the empirical aspect of our enterprise" (T, 6). ans so, because the point of departure were principles, one may explain for Kuhn the scarse contingence of consequences, 
"...making them harder to dismiss as a product of muckraking investigation by those hostile to science" (T, 10).
    2.1 The result of the historian activity would be a narrative that would include a description of the initial state of the process to be explained. It would include also a description of the beliefs at that moment and of the conceptual vacabulary in use. Those resulting considerable changes at the end of the process would come from intermediate and not too notorious gradual changes. What goes on in the process would be a change of beliefs within changes in the context. Concerning the former ones it would be necessary to investigate precisely why the actors decided those changes.
    2.2 For the philosophers5 the problem would be the same: that is, to understand small changes in beliefs. Rationality, objectivity and evidence would come to be subjects easier to deal with that with the referents of the corresponding beliefs. The static Archimedian platform required by the so called neutral observation in the former tradition was then unnecessary and it would have vanished.
    First of all, as for Kuhn, the rationality in historical perspective needs a transitory rationality only in relation with the members of the group which produces each decision. Secondly the changes to evaluate are allways relatively small even if they may seem gigantic in retrospect. Thirdly, in general truth would not come from of comparing beliefs with reality: the evaluation would be indirect. The criteria that intervene are secondary criteria: precision (only aproximate and often unattainable), consistence with other accepted beliefs (at most local), breadth of applicability (increasingly narrow when time goes on), simplicity (depending on the observing eye), among others. They are ambiguous values that anyway are not satisfied at once. But if those criteria are applied to belief changes they would get, for Kuhn, new relevance and sense, both relational ones: a set of beliefs may become more precise, more consistent, larger in applicability, more simple, without becoming truer (T, 13-14).
    The expression 'truer' in sometimes interpreted as 'more probable' but that would carry, even in this Kuhn, what has received the name of 'disastrous metainduction' (as Kitcher baptised it):
 
  
"All past beliefs about nature have sooner or later turned out to be false...the probability that any currently proposed belief will fare better must be close to zero" (T, 14).
    Chilling result, and erroneous from my point of view; already discarded by Poincar‚, not without good reasons, at the beginnings of the century.
    The disastrous metainduction would complement in this way, even radicalizing it, the so recurred underdetermination of theory.
    The consequences that Kuhn presents have even a larger scope:
 
  
"I am not suggesting, let me emphasize, that there is a reality which science fails to get at. My point is rather that no sense can be made of the notion of reality as it has ordinarily functioned in philosophy of science" (ibid.)
    Amazing ...

    Kuhn, as he says, is not far of the strong programme6:
 
  

"...facts are not prior to conclusions drawn from them and those conclusions cannot claim truth" (ibid.).
    A final confession, advanced earlier as a sketch, is especially clarifying:
 
  
"I've reached that position from principles that must govern all developmental processes, without, that is, needing to call upon actual examples of scientific behavior" (ibid.).
    Sensational, then history of real science, what for?
    Towards the end of T Kuhn returns to its central subject.

    The trouble with the historical philosophy of science comes for him from the fact that its quasihistorical or perihistorical examples have questioned the authority of science itself. The pillars of that authority - 1. the priority of facts and its independence from the consequences and 2. the truths concerning an independent external world - would have melt. The option Kuhn faced was either to provide them a firm foundation or to eliminate them completely. But now he maintains that what matters are not observed facts concerning scientific practice but necessary characteristics owned by the evolutionary processes in general. Should we think that in such way Kuhn's difficulty - a quite persistent and enough annoying one - would be totally overcome?

    3. From the early R - very rich and at the same time questionable text - we will take only one point, leaving for some other opportunity other very interesting aspects.
    When Kuhn strongly doubts about the value of the covering law model for history (R, 15-16), his central criticism points to the triviality in some cases, or the non historical character in others (sociological aspects or belonging to social sciences), of the laws that would be assumed by the historian in that model7. To suppose those laws would amount to force the historian to employ instruments totally alien and of doubtful validity for accomplishing his job.
    Then we could demand ourselves if the principles and examples quasi- or perihistorical that Kuhn prefers for the historical philosopher of science would not be purely speculative, because, avowedly, they renounce both to empirical test and to actual historical records and explanations (we must remember that for Kuhn historical work needs not to be only descriptive.

    4. Even if we have considered here only limited aspects of R and T, consistent with many other not alluded passages of those texts and of others, we may point the origin of our strong surprise concerning the central thesis included in T.
    a. For Kuhn history of science and philosophy of science are different things even if the fertilize each other,
    b. Kuhn's practice in his main works, and especially in SSR, seems to be different to the conception exposed in R (and obviously in T), with a strong overlapping if not integration of both supposed separate disciplines,
    c. The independence - so it seems in the texts - of the historical theses belonging to philosophy of science (hypostatiated principles and examples) and opposed to the results of actual history of science, far from immunizing those theses extremely weakens them, and
    d. Kuhn would not be situated in such way, from the0 comparison of his own words, far neither from the "deconstruction gone mad" of the strong program of the sociophilosophy of knowledge nor from the constructivist-idealist8 theses that Edouard LeRoy exposed almost a hundred years ago.
 

    NOTAS
 

    1 See Otero (1996).

    2 Stuewer et al. (1970) deal extensively with the subject of the "distance" or "divorce"between history and philosophy of science.

    3 Zamora 1994 discusses important aspects of historico-philosophical practice in Kuhn's last period though not specifically about his theory on the relations between them.

    4 Nevertheless the reciprocal influence between history and philosophy of science is clear not only in The structure of scientific revolutions, but also in The copernican revolution.

    Still more, many other Kuhn books, papers, reviews and short notes on historical subjects, listed in Hoyningen-Huene (1989). are not alien to the theme of the referred reciprocal influence.

    5 Not only "The trouble with the historical philosophy of science" raises the subject of the philosophical enterprise of those ocupied with science; also "Dubbing and redubbing..." and Kuhn (1989) raise it, in a somewhat but not essentially different version of the former. In both Kuhn elaborates on the natural class concept and on local holism. Kuhn (1991i) and (1993) - this written earlier than T -, also work on the subject of that philosophical enterprise.

    6 See.Otero (1996) and Sol¡s (1994).

    7 It is enough evident that Kuhn alludes to the well know Hempel papaer "The function of general laws in history", The Journal of Philosophy, v.39, 1942. Shortly later Theodor Abel, presented a very intelligent contribution in "The operation called Verstehen" American Journal of Sociology, v.54, 1948. After a lapse of large domination of the covering law model, with its well known sequels, appeared often the criticisms that, in many cases, arrived to a notion very close to that of Verstehen, the very notion that Hempel had tried to supersede. Von Wright presented in his "Explanation and understanding" a new paradigmatical concept. But he didn't go back to the diltheyian and marburguian Verstehen. Kuhn was strongly influenced by this new orientation. Each time Kuhn used the renewals produced in the hardware of the ortodoxanalytic philosophy and then he produced the corresponding rectifications in his thought.

    8 Constructivistas and even idealist modes appear in the niche idea at the end of T; see Hoyningen Huenen (1989) and Otero (1996).
 

    BIBLIOGRAPHY
 

    Hoyningen-Huene, P. (1989) Thomas S.Kuhn's philosophy of science. The University of Chicago, Chicago*.

    Kuhn, T.S. (1970) The structure of scientific revolutions, University of Chicago, Chicago. Second edition.

    Kuhn, T.S. (1977) "The relations between the history and the philosophy of science", T.S.Kuhn. The essential tension. The University of Chicago, Chicago. /conference delivered in 1975/.

    Kuhn, T.S. (1979) "History of science". P.D. Asquith & H.E.Kyburg (eds.), Current research in philosophy of science, Philosophy of Science Association, East Lansing, MI.

    Kuhn, T.S. (1989), "Possible worlds in history of science". S.All‚n (ed.) Possible worlds in humanities, arts and sciences. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin.

    Kuhn, T.S. (1991i) The Road since Structure. A.Fine, M.Forbes & L.Wessels (eds.), Proceedings of the 1990 Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association. PSA 1990, v.2. Philosophy of Science Association, East Lansing, MI.

    Kuhn, T.S. (1991ii) "Tthe natural and the human sciences". D.H. Hiley, J.E.Bohman & R.Shusterman (eds.) The interpretive turn. Cornell University, Ithaca.

    Kuhn, T.S. (1992) The trouble with the historical philosophy of science, Harvard University (Department of the History of Science), Cambridge, MA.

    Kuhn, T.S. (1993) "Afterwords". P.Horwich (ed.) World changes; Thomas Kuhn and the nature of science. MIT, Cambridge, MA.

    Otero, M.H. ( ), "Tres modalidades de inmanentismo", Diánoia.

    Otero, M.H. (1996) "Apuntes sobre el último Kuhn". Llull, v.19.

    Peral, D., Estévez, P. & Pulgarín, A. (1997) "Presencia del pensamiento kuhniano en la literatura científica: 1966-1995", Llull, v.20.

    Solis, C. (1994) Razones e intereses: la historia de la ciencia después de Kuhn. Paidós, Barcelona.

    Stuewer, R. (ed.) Historical and philosophical perspectives of science. Gordon & Breach, New York. /First edition in Minnnesota Studies in the philosophy of science, v.5, 1970, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis/.

    Wartofsky, M. (1976) "The relation between philosophy of science and history of science". R.S.Cohen, P.K.Feyerabend & M. W. Wartofsky (eds.) Essays in memory of Imre Lakatos. Reidel, Dordrecht.

    Zamora, F. (1994) "El último Kuhn", Arbor, v.148.

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