#8 - RAS 14
PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE:
RE-THINKING PARADIGM SHIFT
SOURCE. R. M. Nugayev, "Smena bazisnykh paradigm: kontseptsiia
kommunikativnoi ratsional'nosti" [Basic Paradigm Shift: The Conception of
Communicative Rationality], Voprosy filosofii 2001, No. 1, pp. 114-122. My
translation to appear in Russian Studies in Philosophy, Vol. 42 No. 2, Fall
2002.
Scientific progress used to be thought of in linear terms, as the steady accumulation of new knowledge that gradually displaces erroneous non-scientific beliefs. Many people still think of science that way. Among philosophers of science, however, this view was thoroughly discredited by the path-breaking work of Thomas S. Kuhn, "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions." (1)
Kuhn argued that sciences pass through not only long periods of smooth gradual development but also short periods of rapid discontinuous change, that is, revolutions. In the course of a scientific revolution, a community of scientists abandons an old conceptual framework or "basic paradigm" and adopts a radically new one.
The question on which Nugayev takes issue with Kuhn and his followers is WHY a basic paradigm shift occurs at a specific time. What exactly prompts a scientific community to undergo the painful process of throwing old assumptions and modes of thought overboard and working out new ones?
In Kuhn's account, the crucial role is played by the discovery of new phenomena and data that cannot be explained convincingly within the old paradigm but that can be so explained within a new paradigm put forward by innovating pioneers. (2) But Nugayev says that there is an initial period following the first appearance of the new paradigm when this is not yet the case, so there must be other reasons for the appeal of the new paradigm during this period.
Take, for example, the paradigm shift that was triggered in physics by the publication in 1905 of Einstein's special theory of relativity. At first, Einstein's theory did not lead to any new predictions by comparison with its rivals: it even contradicted Bucherer's experimental data on the deflection of cathode rays in magnetic fields. For this reason some physicists, especially in France, were inclined to reject the theory.
Why then did most physicists accept relativity? Because "from the very start Einstein's theory surpassed its rivals in providing a basis" for reconciliation, dialogue, and "genuine communication among the representatives of the leading paradigms of the old physics, who before Einstein had been psychologically, institutionally, and culturally isolated from one another." Einstein facilitated the unification of such sub-fields of physics as Newton's mechanics, Maxwell's electrodynamics, thermodynamics, and Boltzman's statistical mechanics. Thus the general theory of relativity united the special theory of relativity with Newton's theory of gravitation, thereby pointing the way toward quantum theory.
"The history of science," concludes Nugayev, "may be regarded as the history of constantly fluctuating, emerging, and disappearing theoretical and experimental practices… Only those traditions are able to survive that can support and strengthen one another, leading to the broadening and deepening of our knowledge about the world."
The theories of Kuhn and of Nugayev need not be mutually exclusive. Each may typically apply to a different phase of the process of paradigm shift. It is necessary to re-examine a broader range of paradigm shifts in various sciences from this point of view. In any case, Nugayev has made an important contribution that enriches our understanding of progress in science.
NOTES
(1) First published by the University of Chicago Press in 1962. An enlarged second edition appeared in 1970.
(2) This does not mean that the new phenomena cannot be explained AT ALL within the old paradigm, only that such explanations are too elaborate, unwieldy, and ad hoc to be convincing. Explanations within the new paradigm are more elegant and concise, and therefore (in accordance with the principle of Occam's razor) more convincing.
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