Abstract
I aim to clarify (i) the relationship between Kuhn’s social epistemology of science and the sociology of science, and (ii) the nature of Kuhn’s positive legacy to the philosophy of science. I begin by recounting Kuhn’s relationship to the sociology of science. First, I examine the influence of sociology of science on Structure. Surprisingly, sociology of science had very little influence on Kuhn as he wrote Structure. Second, I examine early responses to Kuhn’s work by sociologists of science. Both the Mertonians and their successors, the proponents of the Strong Programme, were profoundly influenced by Structure. Third, I examine Kuhn’s views on the relevance of sociology to his own work. Kuhn, I argue, believed the sociology of science was indispensible to his project. Finally, I examine his constructive contributions to the epistemology of science. Kuhn, I argue, has provided us with the foundations for building a social epistemology of science. In Structure, Kuhn noted that the structure of a research community changes as it responds to different types of research problems. And in his later work, Kuhn came to see that the creation of new scientific specialties plays an integral role in the advancement of science.
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Notes
- 1.
Kuhn does not cite some of the sources that clearly influenced him. For example, though he mentions Ludwik Fleck’s Entstehung und Entwicklung einer wissenschaftlichen Tatsache in the Preface of Structure, he does not cite it (see Kuhn 1996, pp. viii–ix). Nor does he cite Hans Reichenbach’s Experience and Prediction, the book which initially led him to Fleck’s book (see Kuhn 1979, p. viii).
- 2.
I. B. Cohen’s Franklin and Newton and E. T. Whittaker’s A History of the Theories of Aether and Electricity are each cited eight times. Kuhn’s own Copernican Revolution is cited seven times. Roller and Roller’s The Development of the Concept of Electric Charge and J. R. Partington’s A Short History of Chemistry are each cited six times. H. Metzger’s Newton, Stahl, Boerhaave et la doctrine chimique is cited five times. W. Whewell’s History of the Inductive Sciences, S. P. Thompson’s Life of William Thompson Baron Kelvin of Largs, and A. Koyre’s Etudes Galiléennes are each cited four times. The other source in the list of the ten most cited sources is N. R. Hanson’s Patterns of Discovery. It is cited four times.
- 3.
Kuhn’s formal training, from his bachelor’s degree to his doctoral degree, was in physics. Kuhn learned the history of science working with his mentor, J. B. Conant, who designed and initially taught the General Education science courses at Harvard. Kuhn’s time as a Harvard fellow was spent retooling for this new career.Stephen Brush (2000) has examined the impact of Kuhn’s historical research. Remarkably Kuhn had little impact in that field. His historical articles and books are seldom cited by historians (see Brush 2000, Table 1, p. 45). In addition, Kuhn’s key claims in Black Body Theory and the Quantum Discontinuity: 1894–1912 have not been integrated into physics textbooks (see Brush 2000, pp. 52–54).
- 4.
- 5.
Hanson is the only philosopher to receive more than two citations. Kuhn, though, thanks Ernest Nagel in the Preface, along with Paul Feyerabend, and John Heilbron (Kuhn 1962, p. xiv).
- 6.
There is a dearth of citations to the work of the positivists in Structure, even though Kuhn explicitly criticizes positivism (see Kuhn 1962, p. 146). Kuhn confesses that when he was writing Structure he was quite ignorant of contemporary work by the positivists, including that of Carnap (see Kuhn 1997, pp. 305–306). Kuhn describes his target as “that sort of everyday image of logical positivism” (306). Nagel (1939) and Reichenbach (1938) are the principal sources for Kuhn’s view of positivism. The clearest statement of Kuhn’s conception of positivism is in his review of Joseph Ben-David’s The Scientist’s Role in Society. Kuhn claims that “Ben-David emerges as an unregenerate positivist, a man who believes that scientific ideas are … responses to logic and experiment alone” (Kuhn 1972, p. 168, emphasis added). Alan Richardson (2007) has discussed the idiosyncratic nature of Kuhn’s account of positivism.
- 7.
The following sources cited in Structure report research findings that have a bearing on how the human mind works: Piaget’s The Child’s Conception of Causality, and Les notions de mouvement et de vitesse chez l’enfant, Bruner and Postman’s “On the Perception of Incongruity: A Paradigm,” Stratton’s “Vision without Inversion of the Retinal Image,” Carr’s An Introduction to Space Perception, Hastorf’s “The Influence of Suggestion on the Relationship between Stimulus Size and Perceived Distance,” and Bruner et al.’s “Expectations and the Perception of Color.”
- 8.
Kuhn also cites Harvey Lehman’s Age and Achievement, which includes an influential analysis of the changing productivity of scientists as they age (see Kuhn 1962, p. 90). Though Lehman was a psychologist, his book was later criticized by sociologists, specifically Merton’s students. I thank Dean Simonton for insightful background on Lehman.
- 9.
- 10.
The Institute would later evolve into the Boston Colloquium for Philosophy of Science (see Isaac 2012, p. 234). I thank Alisa Bokulich for alerting me to this connection. George Reisch (2005) argues that though the Institute for the Unity of Science was intended to continue the work of the Vienna Circle, Frank’s vision for the Institute was at odds with the direction that philosophy of science was going in America, a direction toward greater professionalization (see Reisch 2005, pp. 294–306).
- 11.
Cole and Zuckerman examine publications and citations in nine journals: American Sociological Review, American Journal of Sociology, Social Forces, Social Problems, Sociology of Education, British Journal of Sociology, Minerva, American Behavioral Scientist, and Science (see Cole and Zuckerman 1975, p. 169, Note 27).
- 12.
- 13.
- 14.
In a letter to Charles Morris, dated July 31, 1953, where Kuhn describes the contents of his planned book, tentatively titled The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Kuhn notes that his “basic problem is sociological, since … any theory which lasts must be embedded in [a] professional group” (see Thomas S. Kuhn Papers, MC 240, Box 25). I thank George Reisch for drawing my attention to this letter.
- 15.
In Structure Kuhn remarks in a footnote that his own work overlaps with Warren Hagstrom’s work in the sociology of science. Hagstrom completed a Ph.D. in sociology at the University of California, Berkeley.
- 16.
- 17.
In a letter to the President of the Social Science Research Council, dated 21 December 1959, Kuhn claims that sociological studies of science were crucial to developing a more accurate account of science (see Thomas S. Kuhn Papers, MC 240, Box 23).
- 18.
Interestingly, Merton was alarmed about the Strong Programme before Kuhn was. In a letter to Kuhn dated 18 February 1976, Merton expressed concern about the “Kuhnians” and an alleged “Kuhn-vs-Merton” dispute that Merton believed the self-proclaimed Kuhnians were manufacturing (see Thomas Kuhn Papers, MC 240, Box 22).
- 19.
To some extent, the core values identified by Merton are the sociological equivalent of Popper’s demarcation principle, intended to distinguish genuine science from pseudo-science.
- 20.
According to Laudan, “the sociology of knowledge may step in to explain beliefs if and only if those beliefs cannot be explained in terms of their rational merit” (Laudan 1977, p. 202).
- 21.
- 22.
See Pinch (1979) and Barnes (1982, p. 118). I am not alone in insisting that Kuhn’s project is rightly characterized as an epistemology of science. Robert Nola (2000) goes to great lengths to argue that the Strong Programme misappropriated Kuhn’s work, and that Kuhn’s concerns were continuous with the concerns of philosophers of science (see 89). Nola expresses Kuhn’s view on the matter quite precisely in the following remark. “Even though sociology of science can play a role in the individuation of scientific communities, for Kuhn sociology of scientific knowledge plays very little role in theory choice and none in his account of the justification of his principles of theory choice” (Nola 2000, p. 80). Nola, though, believes that Kuhn’s project ultimately fails.
- 23.
For a further discussion of this case see Wray (2011, Chap. 7).
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Acknowledgments
I thank Lori Nash for constructive feedback on numerous drafts of this paper. I also thank Kristina Rolin and George Reisch for critical feedback on earlier drafts of this paper. I thank Charles Hickey, my research assistant, for double-checking my citation counts in Structure. I thank my audiences at the following: the Philosophy Department Colloquium at the State University of New York, Oswego; the Boston Colloquium in Philosophy of Science; the Philosophy Department Colloquium at Rochester Institute of Technology; and the Orange Beach Epistemology Workshop sponsored by the University of South Alabama. I thank Evelyn Brister for inviting me to RIT, and Ted Poston of the University of South Alabama for inviting me to the Orange Beach Epistemology Workshop. I thank Alisa Bokulich, the Director of the Center for Philosophy and History of Science at Boston University, for inviting me to be part of the Robert S. Cohen Forum and Colloquium dedicated to the theme “50 Years since Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions.” I thank Nora Murphy, the Archivist for Reference, Outreach and Instruction, and the rest of the staff at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Institute Archives and Special Collections, for their assistance and for allowing me access to the Thomas S. Kuhn Papers. Finally, I thank SUNY-Oswego for supporting my research trip to MIT to visit the archives.
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Wray, K. (2015). Kuhn’s Social Epistemology and the Sociology of Science. In: Devlin, W., Bokulich, A. (eds) Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions - 50 Years On. Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science, vol 311. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-13383-6_12
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