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From: pc@faron.UUCP (Penny Chase)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: On Kuhn's fashionability
Message-ID: <125@faron.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 21-May-87 13:50:37 EDT
Article-I.D.: faron.125
Posted: Thu May 21 13:50:37 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 23-May-87 12:19:09 EDT
References: <3978@ihlpa.ATT.COM> <8705200312.AA02647@brahms.Berkeley.EDU>
Reply-To: pc@faron.UUCP (Penny Chase)
Organization: The MITRE Corporation, Bedford MA
Lines: 30

Kuhn appealed (and appeals) for a number of reasons.  First, he
addressed questions with which many philopsophers of science had not
been concerned.  Instead of looking at existing scientific theories
from the viewpoint of analytical philosophy he focused upon the
problem of theory formation.  Of course others were interested in the
same problem (e.g., Popper, Hanson), but Kuhn was especially
interested in viewing science as a human activity that is embedded in
a social and institutional context.  In so doing, he created a
framework for the emergence of scientific theories (and resistance to
them) that seemed relevant to historians and sociologists of science.
Today, of course, there are many other philosophers who do the same
thing (Lakatos, Feyerabend, Laudan, Kitcher, for example), and who
perhaps do it with greater philosophical sophistication than Kuhn.
But, probably because he was one of the first and also because Structure of
Scientific Revolutions (SoSR) is such a provocative and intelligible
statement, teachers of introductory courses in a variety of
disciplines assign him.

The second phenomenon contributing to Kuhn's popularity is that when
many scientists read SoSR they said that Kuhn's description of normal
scientific practice accurately reflected their own impressions of what
they did.  Thus, he also appealed to philosphically curious scientists
(but probably not for his philosphy).

Finally, many social scientists took Kuhn's DESCRIPTIVE analysis of
"crisis" science as PRESCRIPTIVE in order to show that their
discipline was a science.  There are many introductory texts in
psychology, anthropology, and sociology that begin with a discussion
of the "paradigm crisis" of the discipline.-- 
	- Penny Chase