Training

Abstract

Kuhn’s account of scientific training is the thinnest and most weakly substantiated part of his general discussion of science. It is supported by no empirical research, and is not clearly related to his own special competences. This, however, only makes its importance the more remarkable. Previous views of scientific training had assumed that it involved genuine experimental validation and conclusive reasoning, that it enjoined openness to experience, that it encouraged a genuinely critical and sceptical attitude. Kuhn’s account may have been thin empirically; but by denying all these earlier commonplaces, it revealed that they had no empirical basis at all. Kuhn’s informal observations on how science is actually taught proved of great significance simply because they addressed a subject where genuine observations of any kind were rare.