Search

"Perspectives on Kuhn: Contemporary Approaches to the Philosophy of Thomas Kuhn" is a book that emerged from a conference in Argentina and Uruguay, featuring five substantial papers and five commentaries. The topics covered in the book include epistemological coherentism, the philosophical nature of 'structure,' the theoretical background of Kuhn's philosophy, incommensurability, and 'world change.' The papers present new claims and assessments of Kuhn's philosophy, while the commentaries highlight potential issues and areas for further exploration. The book offers valuable insights into Kuhn scholarship and is a well-structured and accomplished collection. [Extracted from the article]

The paper addresses the issue of theory-ladenness of observation/experimentation. Motivated by a naturalistic reading of Thomas Kuhn's insights into the same topic, I draw on cognitive neuroscience (predictive coding under Free Energy Principle) to scrutinise theory-ladenness. I equate theory-ladenness with the cognitive penetrability of perceptual inferences and argue that strong theory-ladenness prevails only under uncertain circumstances. This understanding of theory-ladenness is in line with Thomas Kuhn's view on the same subject as well as a cognitive version of modest realism rather than downright antirealism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Beginning 60 years ago, Thomas Kuhn has had a significant impact across the academy and on culture more widely. And he had a great impact on science education research, theorising, and pedagogy. For the majority of educators, the second edition (1970) of his Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Kuhn, 1970a) articulated the very nature of the science, the discipline they were teaching. More particularly, Kuhn's book directly influenced four burgeoning research fields in science education: Children's Conceptual Change, Constructivism, Science-Technology-Society studies, and Cultural Studies of Science Education. This paper looks back to the Kuhnian years in science education and to the long shadow they cast. The discipline of science education needs to learn from its past so that comparable mistakes might be averted in the future. Kuhn's influence was good and bad. Good, that he brought HPS to so many; bad, that, on key points, his account of science was flawed. This paper will document the book's two fundamental errors: namely, its Kantian-influenced ontological idealism and its claims of incommensurability between competing paradigms. Both had significant flow-on effects. Although the book had many positive features, this paper will document how most of these ideas and insights were well established in HPS literature at the time of its 1962 publication. Kuhn was not trained in philosophy, he was not part of the HPS tradition, and to the detriment of all, he did not engage with it. This matters, because before publication he could have abandoned, modified, or refined much of his 'revolutionary' text. Something that he subsequently did, but this amounted to closing the gate after the horse had bolted. In particular, the education horse had well and truly bolted. While educators were rushing to adopt Kuhn, many philosophers, historians, and sociologists were rejecting him. Kuhn did modify and 'walk back' many of the head-turning, but erroneous, claims of Structure. But his retreat went largely unnoticed in education, and so the original, deeply flawed Structure affected the four above-mentioned central research fields. The most important lesson to be learnt from science education's uncritical embrace of Kuhn and Kuhnianism is that the problems arose not from personal inadequacies; individuals are not to blame. There was a systematic, disciplinary deficiency. This needs to be addressed by raising the level of philosophical competence in the discipline, beginning with the inclusion of HPS in teacher education and graduate programmes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Karl Popper emphasized that to distinguish science from pseudoscience, a theoretical system must be falsified, not verified. This paper aims to show that management science research meets the empirical truth criteria Popper identified as the demarcation of science. The findings of this study show that Karl Popper's critical rationalism has limitations when applied to the field of management research. In addition, this article highlights the importance of Thomas Kuhn and Imre Lakatos' critique of Popper's rationalist approach in contributing to the development of management science. Although Popper's critical rationalism has been widely discussed in various papers, there is a research gap in how to integrate Popper's ideas along with the critiques of Kuhn and Lakatos, in particular, into management theory. This paper seeks to address this gap. The pragmatic truth of management theories used by management practitioners must also meet the criteria of empirical truth based on Popper's concept of rationalism, which also includes the critiques of Kuhn and Lakatos. The implications of this research suggest that the Lakatos thinking model approach is the most appropriate for the current state of management science, while also noting the relevant elements of Popper and Kuhn's theories and how these elements can be used to strengthen the Lakatos model approach. Management science with the Lakatos model approach can provide a stronger framework for evaluating management practices and theories, resulting in a more effective and scientifically grounded decision-making process in the field of management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores Thomas Kuhn's mature conception of incommensurable theories as collective structured lexicons that are not mutually translatable. As will be argued, his view on this issue can profitably be approached in the light of the broad pragmatist attitude that one finds at the core of Wittgenstein's late philosophy of language, which can also consistently be ascribed to Kuhn. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Estonian philosopher Rein Vihalemm (1938-2015) wished to reform realism in the philosophy of science. He was dissatisfied with the mainstream analytic philosophy of science--scientific realism and the various anti-realisms alike. He considered these approaches theory-driven and hence too distanced from actual scientific practice. His alternative, which he called practical realism, was inspired and influenced by Joseph Rouse's original reading of Thomas Kuhn. Moreover, Vihalemm viewed as important some lessons from Marxism, which was prevalent in Estonian philosophy during the Soviet occupation. For him, Marx himself inaugurated practical realism with his novel notion of practice that does not consider agency distinct from nature. He also mentions Kant, interpreted in a realistic manner, as a significant influence for his thesis that concepts only apply to practice. In this article, I will critically examine practical realism from the standpoint of classical pragmatism. My primary question is: what kind of realism practical realism can possibly be. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]