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From: ellis@spar.UUCP (Michael Ellis)
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: Re: Scientific advance
Message-ID: <555@spar.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 1-Oct-85 04:22:27 EDT
Article-I.D.: spar.555
Posted: Tue Oct  1 04:22:27 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 3-Oct-85 04:34:14 EDT
References: <249@umich.UUCP> <27500136@ISM780B.UUCP>
Reply-To: ellis@spar.UUCP (Michael Ellis)
Organization: Schlumberger Palo Alto Research, CA
Lines: 74

>>>...  Scientific discovery and advance is nearly
>>>monotonic; no such claim can be made for any religion.
>>
>>I'm the first to defend the rationality of science, but this claim is
>>overly grandiose.  Science doesn't advance monotonically; T.S. Kuhn
>>showed otherwise.
>
>I said "nearly".  Like Rich, I am not impressed by this form of argument.
>Since I am not familiar with Kuhn, please summarize Kuhn's arguments,
>so we can all judge them for ourselves. - Jim Balter (ima!jim)

    Cogniscenti are encouraged to correct my miscomprehensions, but I
    believe Kuhn's thesis (described in his "Structure of Scientific
    Revolutions", 1962) is that scientific progress follows the pattern:

    ..old science - crisis - revolution - new science - normal science..

    ..and that the success of revolutions is determined by the consensus of
    the scientific community (which usually has little more cohesivity than
    the statistical composition of the diverse `vested interests' of its
    practitioners) much like advances in politics and even religion, for
    that matter.

    Furthermore, the truth of old science is usually wiped out, rather than
    monotonically improved. Some examples (not necessarily Kuhn's):

	-Aristotelian science was not improved by Newtonian mechanics, it
	 was totally discarded. Likewise, science's longtime assertion that
	 purports to describe objectively existing real entities would seem
	 to be largely denied by the Copenhagen dogma which insists that
	 only the measurements of the experimental apparatus are objective.

	-The painstaking efforts of many 19th century efforts to determine
	 the precise molecular weight of many chemicals was totally
	 invalidated by the discovery of isotopes.  A huge body of
	 computational techniques (using symbolic reduction, logarithmic
	 tables, abaci/slide rules) has been rendered pointless by digital
	 computers.

        -On many issues, science flip-flops wildly, rather than
	 gradually approaches `truth', such as the wave/particle nature
	 of light; or the similarity of discontinuous motion within many
	 QM schemes to that postulated by certain ancient greeks (Zeno).

    Please note that these are not negative criticisms of science itself
    (which is to be judged by its value to humanity); rather, they are
    criticisms of the notion that science advances monotonically. In fact,
    Kuhn naively assumes the superiority of science.
    
    Kuhn's arguments are widely respected, although they have been subjected
    to healthy and occasionally cynical criticism.  Lakatos argued that Kuhn
    misses the importance of competition between research programs;
    Feyerabend, that Kuhn's arguments would lead "to the conclusion that
    organized crime and Oxford philosophy qualify as science", as AF
    Chalmers put it.

    ======================================================================

    On the related issue of the lack of advance in religion -- that is 
    not in agreement with my experience.

    Early religions had many conflicting gods, assertions about miraculous
    physical powers, and attacks on competing faiths.  Recent developments,
    like the ecumenical movement, a growing sentiment that the deity of all
    religions is identical, the growing interfaith acceptance of other
    mystical traditions, and the disentanglement from conflict with science,
    are clearly signs of great advance in religion.  Unfortunately, much of
    the recent Christian fundamentalism is a departure from this tendency.

    ========================================================================

    "What's so great about science?" - Paul Feyerabend

-michael


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