Thomas Kuhn’s Theory of Rationality

2022

Sofia

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O objetivo deste artigo é compreender o papel e a relevância da sociologia da ciência para as ideias desenvolvidas por Thomas Kuhn em A Estrutura das Revoluções Científicas. Neste artigo, argumento que a Estrutura propõe uma explicação sociológica para aspectos fundamentais do desenvolvimento científico, ainda que as relações entre as ideias propostas na Estrutura e a sociologia da ciência sejam pouco discutidas no livro. Em primeiro lugar, Kuhn mostra como o desenvolvimento da ciência se assenta sobre formas específicas de organização e de prática nas comunidades científicas. Em segundo lugar, sua explicação sobre as resoluções de controvérsias depende de uma abordagem necessariamente comunitária da atividade científica. Ao final do artigo, discuto a ligação entre a abordagem sociológica de Kuhn e as perspectivas atuais em epistemologia social.

Section: Paulo Pirozelliunclassified

Sociologia e abordagem sociológica em A Estrutura das Revoluções Científicas

2022

Sofia

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“…They are responsible for producing evidence, testing hypotheses, exchanging information, socializing new members, and choosing theories. Ultimately, individuals are the only real agents in Kuhn's model of scientific development (Pirozelli 2019).…”

Section: Individuals Communities and Groupsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The reason for choosing that topic is twofold. First, controversies are the founding element of Kuhn's sociological approach, provided that individual criteria of rationality are not sufficient to explain consensus formation see also D'agostino, 2010;Pirozelli, 2019) -so, this proposal can be directly compared to Kuhn's own remarks on the subject. More importantly, controversies are an immensely rich subject, one in which theories, evidence, and social interactions are all intertwined; thus, the way we describe the acceptance of new theories has a direct impact on our conception of science itself.…”

Section: An Explanatory Model Of Scientific Developmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Individuals, Communities, and Groups in Thomas Kuhn’s Model of Scientific Development

2021

Principia

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In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn resorts to concepts from several disciplines in order to describe the general patterns of scientific development. This blend of disciplines can be explained in part by Kuhn's intellectual path, from physics to history and then to philosophy of science; but it also points to a deeper methodological problem, which is the question of what is the real unity of analysis in his model of science. The primary intention of this article is, thus, to give a solution to this difficulty. The answer, I believe, rests on identifying three fundamental units present in Kuhn's theory of scientific development. They are, respectively, the individual, responsible for producing evidence, spreading information, and choosing theories; the community, a set of scientists investigating a series of phenomena; and the groups, individuals with similar behavior but with looser institutional or social ties — a usually neglected category in Kuhnian literature, but equally fundamental for the final outcome of scientific debates. After investigating these categories in detail, I propose a way of integrating them into a general model for explaining the resolution of scientific controversies. Finally, I try to resolve the apparent conflict among disciplinary vocabularies by offering an account of the function of sociological, psychological, and epistemological concepts for describing controversies, and some of the methodologies appropriate for each of these tasks.

“…However, Kuhn also states that, because scientists have different personal and professional experiences, they may end up applying values differently in concrete cases (1977a, 1983a). In other words, the nature of values is such that equally competent researchers in possession of the same body of evidence may achieve distinct conclusions about what is the best theory in a field (for a more extensive discussion on Kuhn's theory of rational choice, see Pirozelli, 2019). I refer to this as Kuhn's thesis of the variability of values.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…They do, but mainly indirectly, by influencing the application of values, and not the result in itself. SeePirozelli, 2019.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The structure of scientific controversies: Thomas Kuhn’s social epistemology

2021

RFU

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Changes of theories are major events in science. Two main types of questions may be asked about them: i) how do scientists choose new theories?, and ii) how is consensus formed? Generally, philosophers do not distinguish these two questions. Kuhn, on the contrary, offers very different answers to each of these questions. Theory-choice, on the one hand, is explained through the application of epistemic criteria, such as accuracy and consistency; nonetheless, because these values do not prescribe a single choice, consensus formation, on the other hand, is explained through a series of socio-epistemic mechanisms, namely: scientific pedagogy, diffusion and production of knowledge within the community (the “wave motion”), and restructuring of the scientific field. These mechanisms are the basis of Kuhn’s social epistemology, in that they are not restricted to sociology nor epistemology, encompassing both social interactions and epistemic evaluations of theories. Keywords: Thomas Kuhn, consensus formation, social epistemology.