Noya Keiichi: “Kuhn—Paradigm”

[Japanese] Noya Keiichi: “Kuhn—Paradigm,” translated by Bi Xiaohui, proofread by Chen Huabei, Hebei Education Publishing House, January 2002

There are some books that one must read, cannot not read, books it is impossible to imagine not reading; for me, Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is a typical example. And yet I seem to have this lazy habit: since I will have to read it sooner or later, there is no harm in reading it a little later. And so, dragging it on, I still haven’t read it.

Next semester I will officially begin studying philosophy of science, and the books that must be read have finally become impossible to avoid; but before that, I had better read yet another introductory work from the periphery…

Of course, although I have not read the original, I do have a preliminary understanding of Kuhn’s theory. Of course, misunderstandings may also arise—for example, by paying too much attention to the concept of “paradigm,” and using it without understanding its exact meaning. In fact, the word paradigm was also somewhat ambiguous for Kuhn himself; he even later tried to replace it with the new term “disciplinary matrix.” Of course, “paradigm” has always been a core concept in Kuhn’s theory, so whether before reading the original or while reading it, one needs to pay close attention to grasping Kuhn’s intention.

In this introductory work, the author takes “The Murder of ‘Science’” as the main thread, with Kuhn as the defendant in the “murder case,” while the author himself serves as the defendant’s counsel, responding to the criticisms of the Vienna School and the Popperian school. In this lively way, he presents Kuhn’s philosophy of science. Of course, as an introductory book, I merely want to use it to further strengthen some of my “peripheral” understanding of Kuhn; after the semester begins, I will directly engage with the original text, so I will not write much more here. I will only extract a passage concerning Kuhn’s “pluralist” stance revealed in his last public lecture—a stance I, of course, very much agree with:

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From the foregoing discussion, Kuhn, at the end of the lecture (delivered on November 19, 1991, at the “Rothschild Special Lecture” organized by the Department of the History of Science at Harvard University), indicated an image of science. First, we must abandon the view that science is “an activity bound by a single method and forged into a single block of rock.” Science is not an immovable enterprise of “an unbroken lineage through the ages”; rather, science should be characterized as an activity “with a complex, non-systematic structure composed of different specialized fields or species.” Each specialized field takes different domains of phenomena as its object, and seeks to use various methods to refine the knowledge and beliefs it currently possesses, thereby bringing about change. There is no unique “scientific method” here. However, denying a single method does not mean adopting a “anything goes” principle. Kuhn chooses another path in between. This is precisely what he stated: to regard science as a “plural” activity. In this sense, the place Kuhn reaches through the conception of a “historical philosophy of science” is neither relativism nor irrationalism, but precisely the pluralism of science.

February 9, 2006