The Structure of Scientific Revolutions [Paperback]



The Structure of Scientific Revolutions [Paperback]

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Review

Since the publication of this book in 1962, Kuhn's writings (and many of his ideas, such as "paradigm shift") have been highly influential in academic and popular discourse. This book is must-reading for anyone studying the history and philosophy of science specifically, or cultural or technological change generally. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

Since Kuhn does not permit truth to be a criterion of scientific theories, he would presumably not claim his own theory to be true. But if causing a revolution is the hallmark of a superior paradigm, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions has been a resounding success. -- Nicholas Wade --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Paperback: 188 pages Publisher: Books LLC (May 18, 2009) Language: English

244 of 282 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The two Kuhns, August 12, 2001

|By  |Suetonius (England) - See all my reviews |

This review is from: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Paperback)

Thomas Kuhn performed a signal service for historiography of science by studying how new ideas and new ways of thinking displace the old. He invented the term 'paradigm shift' to describe what happens when 'normal science' runs into 'anomalies' and enters a 'crisis', which in turn leads to a 'scientific revolution'. Nobody had heard of such things before, so Kuhn had a scoop. He sketched some historical examples in iconoclastic style; the result is this short book, first published forty years ago and still wowing Cultural Studies students today.

Much of what Kuhn the historian of science says here is sensible and well taken. It has certainly been influential, perhaps in ways the author never intended, and should be read for that reason. But there are odd omissions. The greatest paradigm shift in physics since Newton - the adoption of fully-fledged quantum mechanics after 1925 - finds no significant place in this study. Eminent physicists, including Einstein, and even Schrodinger, one of its founders, regarded the new paradigm with deep distaste on aesthetic and philosophical grounds. Yet the methodology was adopted universally almost at once. What sociological factors, what structures of power and patronage brought this about? We are not told.

It is when Kuhn puts on his philosopher-of-science hat and tells us about the 'incommensurability of paradigms' that we should question what he means, and more especially what some people have read into it. The idea is that Archimedes or Aristotle, encapsulated in their ancient world-view, would have been unable to see what Newton was getting at in his 'Principia'; and likewise Newton if you gave him a copy of Dirac's 'Quantum Mechanics'. This has been held to have implications for epistemology, viz: it is a mistake to think of the evolution of science (or any rational endeavor) as 'progress' in the sense of bringing us closer to an accurate picture of the world. Kuhn's position can be likened to Darwinian evolution: progress *from*, yes; progress *towards*, no. There is room here for fancy footwork. But the finer points are lost on some who simply cheer it as a poke in the eye for rationality.

If an epochal break can be found anywhere in the history of science, it is in the transition from the Aristotelian to the modern world-view which took place in early modern times. Since then nothing remotely like it has happened. The training of physicists still begins with a detailed study of Newtonian mechanics, which for many purposes, from shooting pool to spaceflight, provides an entirely adequate description. An important part of learning relativity or quantum mechanics lies in understanding how they fit in with Newtonian physics - in fact, precisely how the paradigms are commensurable where their domains overlap. The same people at different times use the paradigm of Newton and the paradigms of Einstein and Bohr/Heisenberg. They don't use the paradigm of Aristotle or the New Age paradigm because - interesting though these are to the historian or the social scientist - they don't work; they are not fruitful for puzzle-solving, Kuhn would say.

A process of generalization of paradigms has been characteristic of physics for the past few centuries, and this seems true of mature sciences generally. At the fundamental level a paradigm that has proven really useful is hardly ever scrapped (Kuhn cites two cases from physics since Newton: the recurring controversy over the nature of light - both sides seem to have won that one - and the caloric theory of heat). Instead, the old paradigm is subsumed into a more developed theory with a broader domain of application, yielding in some sense deeper insights. Kuhn the physicist knew this, of course, though some of his readers don't; so he had to defend the unusual position that e.g. Newtonian mechanics is fundamentally incompatible with Einsteinian mechanics, even though one is a limiting case of the other (Kuhn disputed this) and both are used successfully all the time. This was the only way he could maintain that they are 'incommensurable'.

Where does this leave the incommensurability of paradigms? The concept can be interpreted according to taste along a spectrum: at one end, true but trivial; at the other end, deep but almost certainly false. Indeed - and I'm going to be shockingly naive here - you wouldn't be reading this otherwise; you'd be chipping flints. For what it's worth, my opinion is that Newton, far from 'living in a different world', would be perfectly at home with modern physics and raring to go, given a couple of years to get up to speed; Archimedes might take a little longer, while Aristotle would be a leading light at the Sorbonne.

More problematic even than incommensurability of paradigms in Kuhn's work are occasional gnomic statements such as the following:

"There is, I think, no theory-independent way to reconstruct phrases like 'really there'; the notion of a match between the ontology of a theory and its 'real' counterpart in nature now seems to me illusive in principle"

and

"Scientific knowledge, *like language*, is intrinsically the common property of a group *or else nothing at all*" (my italics).

Taken with the thesis of the book (though Kuhn denied it) remarks like these open the door to all the baggage of so-called radical relativism. Now the baggage is in the hall and halfway up the stairs, as Gross & Levitt, Sokal & Bricmont and others have pointed out. Some of us wish it was out back in the hen-house.

At the heart of modern physics there is indeed an incommensurability, in at least one of Kuhn's senses. It is between the two fundamental theories, general relativity and quantum mechanics. That doesn't stop people from using both paradigms, but it's a great puzzle: no one knows how to fit them together correctly. When we find out (strictly speaking I should say 'if'), it will be as a result of a paradigm that hasn't shifted since the seventeenth century: theoretical structure expressed in the language of mathematics, built on and feeding back into an empirical base. And there will be real, at present unimagined consequences.

You may say that's naive or begs the ontological question. But I say it's the best we've got. No amount of self-regarding talk about hermeneutics and postmodern science - though it comes with a reference list as long as your arm to all the stars of critical 'theory' - will advance our understanding one iota. Whatever the world is, it isn't like that, and Kuhn never really imagined it was.

In spite of the impression I may have given, the book is worth reading and it isn't difficult (some background knowledge of actual science would help). Read it for yourself; don't believe everything people say about it.

Note added: Some readers think that Kuhn was describing a process of successive approximation to truth, incorporating a smart new account of convergence. The point cannot be made too strongly that he was doing nothing of the sort. I recommend reading page 206 from which the remarks about 'really there' were quoted. You don't have to be a relativist and anti-realist to be a Kuhnian, but it helps.

64 of 73 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Myth of Linear Progression, November 1, 2001

|By  |James D. DeWitt "Alaska Fan" (Fairbanks, AK United States) - See all my reviews |

| |(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)    (VINE VOICE)    |

This review is from: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Paperback)

I'm not sure if it is still the case, but there was a time when Kuhn's book was _the_ most frequently cited book in scientific literature. With all respect to my fellow reviewers, it might be a tad bit arrogant to dismiss such a book as "puerile."

Before Kuhn, we were taught in school that scientific progress was linear, that it was an unending progression of refinements and developments, with one "truth" leading to the next "truth." Kuhn's insights including pointing out that such a linear progression was mostly a lie. His thesis was that the major developments in science were mostly revolutionary. That some "truths" turned out to be false. Astronomy was revolutionized by Galielo and Copernicus, and man was divested from the center of the universe. Physics was revolutionized by Newton. Biology and Darwin. It didn't hurt that plate tectonics came along shortly after Kuhn published, and Kuhn looked like his model was predictive, too.

Part of Kuhn's impact, I have to admit, was a result of the time which the book was first published. In the middle and late 1960's, questioning authority was the heart of any undergraduate's thinking, and Kuhn's ideas were read by some as a license to question all authority.

Perhaps as a consequence, Kuhn's model has been carried by other writers beyond all reason, with everyone from sociologists to New Age fuzzies usurping his terminology, making "paradigm shift" a nearly instant cliche. But his influence has gone far beyond those who want to mis-apply his ideas to everything from post-modern dance to sociobiology. Uniformitarianism has been bloodied, perhaps permanently. By geologists, evolutionists, archaeologists and more; the influence has been pervasive and real. Stephen Jay Gould may or may not subscribe to "Structure," but he has sure demolished uniformitarianism in evolution.

I disagree with those who regard "Structure" as "the most important" anything. But it unquestionably has been stunningly influential, and any serious student of science or philosphy, I believe, will be reading this book a hundred years from now. And apart from its influence and impact, the book still reads well almost 40 years on. It's fun and, if you enjoy seeing the world stood on its ear, you'll like Kuhn's approach.

27 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant, April 25, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Paperback)

Kuhn, doesn't need any more appreciation (at least not from me), and there's more than enough in the other reviews, so what I'll try to provide is a brief synopsis of how the book outlines Kuhn's radical theory.In many ways, the theory is still radical, because people still want to believe that science marks progress, and moves unerringly from one theory to the next, better one. What Kuhn did, was decimate the idea that the 'progress' of science was a steady movement towards the truth, and the never articulated preconception that the "truth" itself (or if you prefer the better theory) was self-evident and would be recognized on sight.Illustrated with hilarious examples of the manner in which the most scientific of all sciences, Physics, has floundered about over the centuries, the book makes its point very forcefully. There is no science disembodied from scientists, there is no scientific theory that is not profoundly influenced by the scientific and social milieu it finds itself in. Kuhn isn't saying science is completely divorced from "reality" or "truth", the Structure of Scientific Revolutions just looks very closely at major and minor scientific "advances" of hte previous centuries and finds no evidence that suggest the dynamic of scientific progress is smooth.

Kuhn was a physicist, but gave that up to work in History of Science. This book is rather compact for a text that would so radically alter its entire discipline (and many others besides), but that is probably what gives it the broad appeal it has. It's not a "difficult" book, nor is it unduly academic. It's certainly not going to be a cake-walk, Kuhn's conception is sufficiently strange to make demands on the reader (as is his language). But the entire exercise is well worth the effort. When you get through the 150 odd pages of this text, you wonder why it wasn't said before. Then you wonder whether everything we so firmly believe stands on as shaky ground. Like the man said, you must read this book.

Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn's Influence on the Philosophy of Science

by Emanuel L. Paparella - 2008-03-10



It is hard to think of two thinkers who have had a greater influence on contemporary philosophy of science. Their main insight is that it is impossible to investigate the nature of reality without operating with some mental paradigm or other, usually assumed by scientists but not scientifically provable, and therefore we should see science as nothing more than the evolution of ideas paralleling the evolution of organisms.

Popper was twenty years Kuhn’s senior and is perhaps best known for his The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1934), The Open Society and its Enemies (1945), and Conjectures and Refutations (1963). They are considered among the most important philosophical works of the 20th century. The first one sets out his theory of “falsification” (which we shall explore further down) together with topics such as theories, probability, corroboration, and quantum theory. The second defines the “open society” as one which allows its citizens to examine and put forward a wide range of differing proposals, followed by unbiased criticism, followed by the making of any necessary changes to benefit the common good of society.

In this book Popper offers a severe critique of the totalitarian society advocated by Plato and Marx. To his mind, those societies preclude the openness he advocates by claiming knowledge that they cannot possibly have and then obliging others to submit to it. In the third book Popper applies falsificationism to both the philosophy of science and political philosophy.

Falsificationism gave rise to a whole new area of debate in the philosophy of science. It claims that the mark of a scientific theory is whether it makes predictions which could in principle serve to falsify it. The more such predictions a theory makes, the better it is. This is Popper’s response to what he calls “the myth of induction.” As characterized by Hume, induction is the method of arriving at theories, laws or generalizations by observing regularities in experience. Popper agrees with Hume that any generalization goes beyond the possible evidence for it. No number of observed cases of some A having property B allows the conclusion that all As have that property. That is mere conjecture and speculation. One cannot possibly observe all As to justify an unassailable conclusion.

So the first fallacy of this characterization assumes erroneously that scientific generalizations are conclusions. The second fallacy is that it fails to describe accurately the process by which scientists go about forming hypotheses. Rather than being conclusions inferred from evidence, those generalizations have the logical status of mere conjectures. They are tentative hypothesis on trial in “the court of experience.” Thus Hume’s problem of induction disappears because generalizations are not supported or justified by observation. On the contrary, generalizations are logically prior, being first conjectured and then either refuted by experience (when some A is found which lacks property B), or survive to await further observation of As. So experience can never verify a theory as true, only falsify it. Generalizations are first conjectured, then held up to the scrutiny of experience for refutation.

Closely tied to Popper’s conception of science as generating theories capable of falsification is his attack on the dialectics of Marx and Hegel, such theories seem immune from empirical falsification, since any experience can be accounted for by some suitable interpretation of the doctrine. Popper finds particularly outrageous that Marxism explicitly claims to be a science. He is equally scathing of both Plato and Freud whom he also dubs as enemies of the open society.

Popper’s influence has furthered many debates in the philosophy of science and undoubtedly inspired the work of Thomas Kuhn who is best known for his seminal work titled The Structure of Scientific Revolutions which he wrote as a graduate student in theoretical physics at Harvard University in the early sixties. Kuhn was dismayed by the simplistic rationalistic accounts that modern philosophers gave of the history of science as a continually progressive subject edging ever closer to the truth. Kuhn challenged the idea of continuous, if not outright deterministic progress. He saw radical discontinuities between different periods of scientific investigations.

Kuhn argues that the history of science is punctuated by violent intellectual revolutions overturning long periods of rather conservative puzzle-solving. He saw periods of so called “normal” science as characterized less by independent and objective research than by adherence to some agreed assumptions and expected outcomes. Paradoxically, the scientists begin to look like a priesthood of a faith called science wherein everything can be doubted except the faith itself. During these periods of normal science, unexpected findings often get brushed aside as irrelevant and original research which in any way questions the current assumptions of “orthodox” theory are debunked as useless speculation.

Thus we arrive at Kuhn’s most original notion, that of the paradigm; that is to say, the web of interwoven assumptions and beliefs, a faith of sort, shared by a particular community which underlies and sets the agenda for the current research. As per Kuhn, only results which tend to strengthen the current paradigms get accepted during periods of normal science. What is highly intriguing in the process is that the paradigm itself is never questioned or criticized. However, from time to time paradigms are challenged and overthrown by intellectual revolutions. When the current paradigm fails to provide adequate models for observed phenomena a paradigm-shift takes place and a new more powerful model which has greater explanatory force takes its place. For example, Copernicus’ heliocentric theory of the Solar system will replace the Ptolemaic idea that the sun revolves around the earth, or Einstein’s theory of relativity and quantum mechanics will replace Newton’s theory of gravity, space and motion.

When this paradigm shift takes place, the scientists’ view of the world is so radically altered that old and new are qualitatively and quantitatively incomparable. It is as if a new “myth” of making sense of reality arrives on the scene. One is bound to muse whether or not the Western mind makes sense of reality via “the myth of science” while other cultures use different myths and explanatory paradigms. To wrap one’s mind around that concept however requires that one adjusts one’s understanding of the meaning of “myth” as being much more than a mere cute lie about reality to tell children.

Be that as it may, from these observations Kuhn derives the notion of “incommensurability” which challenges the notion that science is on an advancing path of unstoppable progress toward ultimate truth. The undeniable fact, Kuhn points out, is that scientists operating at different theoretical periods with different paradigms live in psychologically different worlds. The world of Ptolemy is not the same world as Copernicus. When Ptolemy observes the sun he observes an object that move around the earth, whereas Copernicus sees the central star of the solar system.

So what are the implications for science’s usurpation from philosophy of the idea of absolute truth? For both Popper and Kuhn it is a questionable notion that science ought to do without as it attends to its own proper domain which is not that of metaphysics or theology but mere observation of phenomena and its laws. Given that it is impossible to investigate the nature of reality without operating with some paradigm or other, it is wiser by far to see science as the evolution of ideas in response to the phenomena of the world. Vico for one recommends that man can know much more of what he himself has made (language, institutions, history) than about nature which he certainly has not made as a creature. Indeed, if we think of the evolution of ideas in much the same way as the evolution of organisms, then there is no more reason to believe ideas are evolving towards some ultimate truth, just as there is no reason to think that organisms are evolving towards some ultimate being.

Some of course are not persuaded even when science assumes a more humble stance as suggested by Popper and Kuhn. They are not impressed by a purposeful universe with no overarching intentionality. From the grandeur of the universe revealing an intelligent design, they conclude that just as it is absurd to find a watch in the street and to proclaim that it came together by itself; it is equally absurd to observe a design in the universe and fail to see that it points to a Maker who created it all with one Word understood as the “logos” or its meaning. Western philosophy begins with the idea of an orderly and meaningful universe.

As Kant famously put: two sublime phenomena of the universe are the starry sky above me and the moral law within me. There seems to be an intimation of a connection between the starry night above and the moral law within, as Wordsworth and Coleridge’s poetics of “intimations of immortality” powerfully suggest. And so the dialogue goes among honest men of good will, impelled by a courageous and unbiased examination of both sides of the argument on science vis a vis a vis truth, for more than his will to power what ultimately impels man is his will to truth.

A New Paradigm for Thomas Kuhn

Steve Fuller argues that Kuhn's ideas were anything but revolutionary

By Chet Raymo

From the September 2000 Scientific American Magazine | 1 comments



Thomas Kuhn: A Philosophical History for Our Timesby Steve Fuller

University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2000 ($35) rodney1956 at 01:16 AM on 08/10/09

Here's the foundation for a new way of viewing the world.

The basic idea is that we live in a universal unification where there is absolutely no solidity or separation as we understand it between any two physical or nonphysical entities on Earth, in space or in time. If this actually is the case, everything will be totally revolutionised and nothing _ not science, not medical practice, not anything within or beyond imagination _ can ever be the same. Essential to this basic idea is a line spoken by German physicist Albert Einstein (1879-1955):

Imagination is more important than knowledge&

In this quote, Einstein isn_t speaking of fantasy, but of applying scientific knowledge in an imaginative way (maybe it would be better to say _imagination is just as important as knowledge ). Also essential is the idea of the great English writer William Shakespeare (1564-1616) not merely being poetic or entertaining when he said in his play _Hamlet ,

_There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,

Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. 

To start our journey into these limitless miracles and magical experiences of the science that will create a new earth and a new universe, I_ll post some paragraphs from here and there in my website that will start the conversation as well as illustrate that, as the 1968 song _Master Jack  (by the South African band 4 Jacks and a Jill) said,

It’s a strange, strange world we live in .

That's enough for my introduction. Now let's get down to the business of proposing a new paradigm -

ARE WE ON THE BRINK OF A REVOLUTIONARY BREAKTHROUGH IN ALL AREAS OF LIFE?

MODERN SCIENCE IS DISCOVERING THAT THERE_S MORE TO THE WORLD THAN CAN

EVER BE REVEALED BY OUR PHYSICAL SENSES AND SCIENTIFIC INSTRUMENTS.

I read a very short adaptation in the science magazine Discover of the May 2009 book _Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness Are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe  by medical doctor Robert Lanza with astronomer Bob Berman. They say life _ particularly consciousness _ creates time, space and the cosmos itself: without us, the universe could not exist. They say things like _ _& time does not exist independently of the life that notices it , _& space is neither physical nor fundamentally real in our view , _In daily life, space and time are harmless illusions  and _Quantum theory even casts doubt on the notion that distant objects are truly separated & 

How could the conclusions of Biocentrism possibly apply to the solid world of distinct objects and periods of time that we can see and touch; and which all our scientific instrumentation, medical imaging and sophisticated detectors unequivocally confirm? Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia says, _British software developer, physicist and mathematician Stephen Wolfram_s conclusion is that the universe is digital in its nature, and runs on fundamental laws which can be described as simple programs: cellular automata. He predicts a realization of this within the scientific communities will have a major and revolutionary influence on physics, chemistry, biology and the majority of the scientific areas in general.  In _The Atlantic Monthly  for April 1988, journalist Robert Wright says U.S. computer scientist and physicist _Ed Fredkin thinks that the universe is a computer. According to his theory of digital physics, information is more fundamental than matter and energy. He believes that atoms, electrons, and quarks consist ultimately of bits_binary units of information, like those that are the currency of computation in a personal computer or a pocket calculator. 

And it is stated by (part of one of the top philosophy sites on the Internet) that the British quantum physicist David Bohm (1917-1992) asserted that the tangible reality of our everyday lives is really a kind of illusion, like a holographic image. Underlying it is a deeper order of existence, a vast and more primary level of reality that gives birth to all the objects and appearances of our physical world in much the same way that a piece of holographic film gives birth to a hologram. Bohm calls this deeper level of reality the implicate (which means enfolded or hidden) order, and he refers to our own level or existence as the explicate, or unfolded order. Bohm is not the only researcher who has found evidence that the universe is a hologram. Working independently in the field of brain research, Stanford neurophysiologist Karl Pribram has also become persuaded by the holographic nature of reality. He says that the human brain can be modeled as a hologram. Capitalizing on Pribram_s findings, Bohm states that our brains are smaller pieces of the larger hologram. That our brains contain the whole knowledge of the universe. So, you can see how each mind has a limited perspective of the universal hologram. Our brains are our windows of perception. Each mind always contains the whole picture, but with a limited and unclear perspective. We each have different experience in our lives, but each perspective is valid. Our brains mathematically construct objective reality by interpreting frequencies that are ultimately projections from another dimension, a deeper order of existence that is beyond both space and time.

I think these 2 methods are complementary _ one uses lasers and produces a hologram (whose digitization depends on the programming of its photons and other parts by the second procedure_s QM-SCN), another which doesn_t use lasers but concentrates on a Quantum-Mechanical SuperComputer Network whose simulation of worlds and people is displayed on the universal hologram. Holograms we_re familiar with only result from visible light. But the word light can be applied to any form of electromagnetic radiation. Superimposing various frequencies in an object might cause them to stimulate not just our eyes but also nerves involved in perception of touch, temperature, smell, etc. This would make any object appear solid and to have mass (near the end of the 1980s, the magazine _Scientific American  reported that holograms have been made not only with visible light and X-rays, but also with microwaves and sound waves). The object could even affect any scientific instrument e.g. detectors of electric, magnetic or gravitational fields. And objects in the universal hologram would not only include the screens of our computers, TVs and mobile phones but every physical and nonphysical part of the universal hologram would be a receptor for the downloading of data from the Quantum Supercomputer (in other words, a _screen  for invisibly displaying data).

Quantum teleportation is the process of making a subatomic particle�s physical state vanish from one place and appear in another. It�s possible because of a bizarre phenomenon known as entanglement, which allows particles to share information even if they are physically separated. This phenomenon is so odd that Albert Einstein uncomfortably referred to it as _spooky action at a distance.  Eugene Polzik and his colleagues at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, in collaboration with Ignacio Cirac of the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics in Germany, entangled a light beam with a magnetized gas of cesium atoms. _For the first time,  Polzik says, quantum teleportation _has been achieved between light_the carrier of information_and atoms.  This was also the first time that it was done with a macroscopic atomic object acting as the target, instead of teleporting occurring between pairs of photons or pairs of atoms. But a superfast quantum computer, Polzik notes, requires the transfer of information between a data stream like light and a stored quantum state (such as the atoms in the computer�s hard drive).

But isn_t all this just an interesting new way of describing the real and tangible world which we see and which our technology detects and manipulates? No, there is plenty of room for our preconceptions to be cast aside, and for so-called miracles or magic to become routine parts of everyday life. Unconventional US cosmologist Max Tegmark says _You are made up of quantum particles, so if they can be in two places at once, so can you.  We can take this to its ultimate conclusion and say _The universe is made up of quantum particles, so if they can be in two places at once, so can the universe.  There need not be any such thing as parallel universes, however (the parallel-universes, also called the many-universes or many-worlds, interpretation of quantum mechanics was developed by American physicist Hugh Everett III in 1957). The universe_s being in two places simultaneously could mean it_s in the same space-place as any or all of its particles. It could also be in the same time-place as any or all of its earlier or later selves because there can be be no space without time).

Jack Harris, an Applied Physicist at Yale University says quantum mechanics describes a crazy microscopic world where particles whiz around at blistering speeds and routinely violate the classical laws of physics we take for granted. Jack Harris_s goal is to take advantage of the _really strange, even mystical  laws of the microscopic and apply them to problems in our macroscopic world. _The ultimate eureka moment would be to suddenly realize that a [macroscopic] object is doing something that is absolutely forbidden by classical physics,  he says. If we look closely at the universe by not restricting it to the classical physics which preceded the quantum principle, we can comprehend how the macroscopic universe could behave quantum mechanically and violate classical physics. It�s easy to imagine all parts of the universe being in contact (and thus forming a unification) when that universe was the size of a subatomic particle, nearly 14 billion years ago. Since the universe still has the same properties as a particle (and particles obey quantum mechanics_ wave-particle duality in which subatomic particles and waves of energy can behave as each other), it is still a unification (and a unified field).

In 1980 or the late 1970s, American astronomer Carl Sagan (1934-1996) wrote these lines for his award-winning television series and accompanying book, _Cosmos : _There is an idea _ strange, haunting, evocative _ one of the most exquisite conjectures in science or religion. It is entirely undemonstrated; it may never be proved. But it stirs the blood. There is, we are told, an infinite hierarchy of universes, so that an elementary particle, such as an electron, in our universe would, if penetrated, reveal itself to be an entire closed universe.  Well, this writing doesn_t support the idea of a hierarchy of universes. But I do believe _ it stirs my blood! _ in the _exquisite conjectures  of the universe (and the infinite Cosmos) behaving like an elementary particle, and of these two combining to form one unified field.

In about 1980 (and also in his 2008 book, _The Moon Is New _ Time Comes In With A Minus Sign ), the implications of Einstein�s Special Relativity theory were studied by the American John Dobson (creator of the _Dobsonian  telescope mount, co-founder of the Sidewalk Astronomers Organization). He coined the term _zero separation  to describe Relativity�s implications, but describing the universe as a Unified Field or Grand Unification would be just as accurate. Suppose a star we are viewing is at a distance of 100 light years (this can be represented as +100). Since we see nothing as it presently is but as it was when the light left it, we are seeing the star as it was 100 years ago (represented as -100). Repeated experimental verification of Einstein_s Relativity theory confirms its statement that space and time can never exist separately but form what is known as space-time. The space-time distance between us and the star is therefore 100 + (-100) i.e. 100-100 i.e. 0 and there is actually zero separation between us and the star_s gravity, heat etc.

How can zero separation be true if our eyes and telescopes can see that the star is obviously far away, if its gravity has no noticeable effect on us and if its heat has no effect on us but would instantly evaporate anything that, in fact, had no separation from it? This is a very hard question to answer in a few lines. For now, I_ll just say that I find it convenient to think of people living in two worlds (one of zero separation, one where things are as they seem) but the unification spoken of throughout these paragraphs unites these two worlds into one. Remembering that I believe all existence unfolds in a computer-generated hologram, _the truth of zero separation is similar to 2 objects which appear distant from each other on a huge computer screen actually being unified by the strings of ones and zeros making up the computer code which is all in one small place . The 2 objects which appear distant from each other but are not actually separated at all could be the star (along with its gravity or heat) and us _ or you and me, or 2 atoms in your or my body, or the opposite sides of an atomic particle somewhere in space or somewhere in time, or the entire universe throughout eternity and a cell in your little finger or in your brain.

After suffering any kind of illness or injury, an approach which enlists mind-body unity (think of psychoneuroimmunology extended into realms of universal unification and zero separation) and all 5 dimensions in the universe is essential to a complete and lasting recovery. Belief in 5 dimensions arises from equations worked out by Einstein and remarkably, there is absolutely no difference between these 5 and the 10 dimensions of physics_ superstring theory _ except for scale, which the explained fractal nature of our universe makes relatively unimportant since the microscopic and macroscopic worlds are merely the same irregular, fragmented shapes of fractal geometry repeated at different magnifications. The 3 space dimensions of length, width and height plus the 4th dimension we call time are handled admirably by the doctors and nurses involved in any necessary surgery and followup medical treatment (their efforts are aided by eating well, sleeping well, doing daily exercises, not smoking etc.) The 5th dimension seems to be responsible for unification of the entire universe _ a pursuit started in earnest with Einstein_s attempt to find a _unified field theory  and continued by scientists to this day (the best known modern contender would be physics_ string theory).

_Unify  means _make into one  or _form into a unit . So in a truly unified universe, there can be no distance between any physical or non-physical entities in space or time (otherwise, there would be more than one entity in the universe and it would not be unified). Thus, zero separation must exist between all things (this is similar to 2 objects which appear distant from each other on a huge computer screen actually being unified by the strings of ones and zeros making up the computer code which is all in one small place). Therefore, there is no separation between a person and health (or indeed, sickness). But the conscious mind can choose one or the other, and I choose to be healthy. Everything can be done perfectly in the first 4 dimensions but to be assured of the desired outcome, we must not ignore reality and the 5th dimension (of course, consciousness has its limits too and we have to let our unconscious minds guide us to health, just as our conscious minds alone have little to do with e.g. maintaining a normal heartbeat). Of course, all this could be dismissed and a person_s health attributed to the placebo effect. But doesn_t it make more sense to accept the wonders of a 5th dimension than to assume placebos can work actual miracles? (Or maybe these paragraphs merely attempt to detail how the placebo effect works?)

Albert Einstein_s Theory of Relativity is a geometric description of the universe. This letter uses that geometry, aided by fractals, to support the conclusions in the paragraph above (a fractal is a geometric structure having an irregular or fragmented appearance which is of a similar character at all magnifications _ the word _fractal  was coined in 1975 by French mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot). Following are a few lines on the astronomical, the human (Einsteinian), and physics_ string or superstring, magnifications -

Astronomy pictures space-time as 3+1 dimensions (space_s length, width and depth + an extra dimension called time) existing on the surface of a balloon which is expanding but there is no centre to the universe from which that expansion originates i.e. the balloon must possess an inner _hyperspatial  point (not in space-time) where the Big Bang occurred. According to the 1973 book ALBERT EINSTEIN: CREATOR AND REBEL by physicist Banesh Hoffman and Einstein�s secretary Helen Dukas, mathematical equations developed by Einstein in 1917 say a maximum of 3 _subuniverses  could exist in our cosmos: here, I�ll refer to them as SPACE (embracing the 3 dimensions of length, width and height), TIME (the 4th dimension) and HYPERSPACE (the 5th dimension). Astronomy_s picture unites space and time into Einstein�s space-time (and adds a 5th dimension, which was introduced in a letter to Albert Einstein written by Theodor Kaluza). He proposed that Einstein_s dream of finding a unified theory of gravitation and electromagnetism might be realized if he worked his equations in five-dimensional space-time. Einstein scoffed at the idea at first but later reconsidered and helped Kaluza get his paper published. A few years after that, physicist Oskar Klein published a quantum version of Kaluza_s work. In the 1970s, the resulting Kaluza-Klein theory turned out to be beneficial in working on supersymmetry (a postulated unifying relationship between elementary particles). The first paragraph stated, in a truly unified universe there can be no distance between any physical or non-physical entities in space or time (otherwise, there would be more than one entity in the universe and it would not be unified *). We can already travel in the 3 dimensions of ordinary space, so in a universe where all the dimensions form a unity, sooner or later we_ll learn to travel in 4th dimensional space (time) and 5th dimensional hyperspace. If we journey in these other dimensions, they must have spatial coordinates for us to navigate in (length, width and depth in time and 5D as well as familiar 3D _ if we choose, we can therefore say the universe has 9 dimensions _ and the zero separation unifying these 9 can be regarded as a 10th dimension).

A few more details of the unification I envisage might be appropriate: the Grand Unified Theory sought by today_s scientists and mathematicians aims at combining electromagnetism (the relations between electricity and magnetism) with the strong and weak nuclear forces of the subatomic world. Another step in unification would see this followed by the Unified Field Theory which adds gravity to the mix (begun by Einstein and continued today by string theory as well as other theories). Yet another step would be practical combination of unification not only with quantum mechanics and General Relativity but also with zero separation (first implicitly suggested in Special Relativity and elaborated on about 1980 by the American John Dobson). If you_re impatient, just remember that all the scientific and computing knowledge is united with us and has no separation from us right now _ I_m sure people, being ingenious creatures, will gain access to it much sooner than expected (perhaps in years instead of centuries). And I_d expect this new science to reach into areas once reserved for religion and philosophy.

Relativity and fractals present us with a world and universe that are ultimately mathematical in nature. According to U.S. cosmologist Max Tegmark, mathematical formulas create reality _ he says in a 2008 interview with theoretical astrophysicist Adam Frank, _I got excited about the idea that the universe is really nothing more than a mathematical object. That got me thinking that every mathematical object is, in a sense, its own universe.  When his paper regarding this was submitted to a scientific journal and rejected as being too speculative, he showed the rejection letter to his friend John Wheeler (1911-2008), a Princeton theoretical physicist. Wheeler said, _Extremely speculative? Bah!  Then he reminded Tegmark that some of the original papers on quantum mechanics were also considered extremely speculative.

This lends credibility to what I said in the first paragraph about zero separation existing between all things _ _this is similar to 2 objects which appear distant from each other on a huge computer screen actually being unified by the strings of ones and zeros making up the computer code which is all in one small place  (this analogy also invokes mathematics & maths of a binary nature). Thus, it appears reasonable to suggest the universe_s fifth dimension truly could be the location of strings of ones and zeros creating unification and zero separation and that, as paragraph 1 states, _Everything can be done perfectly in the first 4 dimensions but to be assured of the desired outcome, we must not ignore reality and the 5th dimension .

Not having access to anything resembling a time machine so we can physically manipulate the 5th dimension, all actions utilising hyperspace in 2009 must be purely mental and based on unwavering belief in the existence of a 5th dimension. There is a technological approach which I_ll now try to describe _ Morpho butterflies create colour by selectively adding and deleting certain wavelengths of light. Physicists have only recently devised comparable materials, called photonic band-gap crystals; and are now exploring their use in phone switches, solar cells and antennas. No surprise, then, that some engineers are looking to the living world for the next generation of optic inspirations. I believe advances in engineering and biology will enable humans, like the morpho butterfly, to selectively add and delete certain wavelengths of light. But other portions of this writing have shown how anything and everything can be regarded as light (by e.g. superimposing electromagnetic and gravitational waves). So the day will come when we can add or delete wavelengths anywhere we choose, and there will be absolutely no limits to what a human can do!

However, it is good to remember that we will never be gods or goddesses because the rest of the universe is also included in this unification. I anticipate people will oneday have band-gap structures in their brains that are no bigger than a computer chip (these won_t require surgical implantation because of the Quantum-Mechanical SuperComputing Network_s creation of the pre-existing digital nature of all parts of the universe*). Photonic band-gap crystals would, of course, only deal with light in its photonic forms (energy forms such as visible light or radio waves). The band-gap structures I have in mind would need to deal with forms like matter, so they could add or delete anything and everything we choose. They might accomplish this by acting similarly to a modem that acts on a scale trillions of times smaller than a modem manufactured by nanotechnology, and would be capable of manipulating digitised matter. Then they could emulate computers� copy/paste function to add things; as well as their delete function, to remove things. This ability must only come to fruition in a future, ideal society: it would only be wasted and abused in the present warring and selfish world! Despite this short article not being written in mathematical equations and its conclusions seemingly not capable of being verified in a laboratory, our minds can use the unification of everything _ including matter, mind and energy _ to produce physical and reproducible results.

Advanced software could also be used to genetically engineer people whose genes have been disassembled into subatomic, electromagnetic pulses and manipulated by computers. An opportunity to possess an eternally youthful body and a brain free of criminal tendencies may therefore exist. When we develop this electronic hardware and software, and also acquire the technology to manipulate the unification and zero separation of all space-time (resulting in unimaginable revolutions in travel within outer space and on Earth, as well as what science-fiction fans term time travel), everyone who has long since died could have their minds downloaded into reproductions of their bodies and be resurrected (establishing colonies throughout space and time would prevent overpopulation).

Thomas Kuhn 07.18.2009

By: Tor Aarestad

A self-described “physicist turned historian for philosophical purposes,” THOMAS KUHN (1922-96) was largely an autodidact in his eventual home — the then-new field of the history of science. With his scattershot academic background, it seems only appropriate that his major work, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), became a cynosure for intellectuals from all fields for several decades. Kuhn inspired calumny from fellow scientists for arguing that every scientific paradigm is eventually replaced by a new paradigm that’s no closer to “truth.” Although humanist-baiter Alan Sokal has laid the blame for the Science Wars at his feet (because, for Kuhn, science was “fundamentally a social undertaking,” as one of his followers paraphrased him), Kuhn rejected the anti-scientific rants of the cultural leftists as vehemently as he skewered the scientific theism of the positivists. He was an intellectual evolutionist — in his view only those theories that best suited the problems of the time would develop and thrive — and a heretic in what we can now recognize as a religious war.



Philosophy podcast - Forums: Philosophy



Philosophy at Bristol

I thought I would share this with the forum as I find it this to be highly insightful, educational and rewarding. The Philosophy department at my University have agreed for the Professors to congregate together to discuss some of the most fundamental and profound questions within philosophy. Occasionally acclaimed guests appear in selected podcasts

Quote:

Taking Science Seriously - Scientific versus alternative medicine

Podcast 001. This is our first podcast. It is mainly my rant against homeopathy, but it has bits about witchcraft and the anti-vaccination movement also. here

What is in a Paradigm?

Podcast 002. Here I am talking about what Thomas Kuhn meant by a 'paradigm'. (Direct download/stream from here)

Dan Dennett - What does my body need ME for? The role of human intelligence

Podcast 003. This time it's Dan Dennett giving a public lecture in Bristol on 20 March 2009, as part of the conference in memory of Susan Hurley. Bristol City Council have made a video webcast available here (you can also see Dan's slides there).

Science and Truth

Podcast 004. This is the first group podcast from Philosophy at Bristol. We discuss the nature of science, and whether science tells us the truth about the world. (Download/listen this podcast directly from here )

Knowledge and Scepticism

Podcast 005. Our second group podcast, in which we talk about knowledge and scepticism. Do we really know many of the things we think we know? (Download/listen to this podcast directly from here)

Mind and Brain

Podcast 006. In this podcast we discuss the relationship between the mind and the brain, the body, and the world. Does the mind need a brain? For that matter, might it encompass more than the body? (Download/listen to this podcast directly from here)

Why Rousseau Matters

Podcast 007. This is Professor Chris Bertram's inaugural professorial lecture, on the importance of the philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778). (Download/listen to this podcast directly from here)

Plato on Love

Podcast 008. This podcast explores the philosophical origins of the idea of 'platonic love', with special guests Danielle Allen and Jessica Moss. We talk about Plato's views on love and how they relate to philosophy and 'the good'. (Download/listen this podcast directly from here)

Reason and Rationality

Podcast 009. With special guest Ralph Wedgwood, we discuss reason and what it is to be rational. (Download/listen to this podcast directly from here)

URL:

BBC Radio 4 'In Our Time' Philosophy

Podcasts (require realplayer)

The Frankfurt School - why no Revolution?

Mary Wollstonecraft - the Vindicator of the Rights of Woman

Schopenhauer - the tyranny of the Will

St Thomas Aquinas - his profound influence on Western faith and philosophy

Logical Positivism - or is it?

The School of Athens - picturing Greece in Renaissance minds

Thoreau and the American Idyll - America in the Wilderness

The Consolation of Philosophy - a new year's message from Boethius

Aristotle's Politics - a perfect society?

The Translation Movement - Aristotle in Arabic

Materialism - are we living in a material world?

- fear and trembling in Copenhagen

The Social Contract - Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau and the Origins of Society

Albert Camus - Rebel with a Cause

Avicenna - wine, women and philosophy

Guilt - what is it good for?

Socrates - the man and the myth

Common Sense Philosophy - "There is no statement so absurd that no philosopher will make it"

Ockham's Razor - cutting medieval philosophy down to size

Spinoza - believed that God and Nature were the same thing

Karl Popper - his ideas challenged our approach to the philosophy of science

Anarchism - a question of authority?

Altruism - how can evolutionary biology explain it?

Averroes - the battle between faith and reason

John Stuart Mill - one of the most influential philosophers of the 19th Century

Friendship - thinking philosophically about our close companions

Relativism - the battle against transcendent knowledge

Thomas Hobbes and the political philosophy of 'Leviathan'

Pragmatism - a practical philosophy fit for 20th century America

Cynicism - bold and populist, the history of a shocking philosophy

Karl Marx - In Our Time's Greatest Philosopher

Beauty - the philosophy of beauty

Stoicism - the search for inner calm

The Mind/Body Problem - does the mind rule the body or the body rule the mind?

Rhetoric - from the original sophists to latter-day demagogues

Jean-Paul Sartre - a man condemned to be free

Empiricism - the English philosophy?

Heroism - do we live in an heroic age?

Wittgenstein - a philosophy of linguistics

Duty - concepts of obligation.

Human Nature - innate or nurtured?

Imagination - just what is it?

Freedom - a principle worth fighting and dying for?

The Soul - the key to our individuality as humans?

The Examined Life - is an unexamined life worth living?

Virtue - is it derived from reason?

URL:

New Podcast: John Wilbanks on Barriers to the Flow of Scientific Knowledge

Posted February 5th, 2008 by Ellen Duranceau

In the latest in the series of podcasts on topics related to scholarly publication and copyright, the Executive Director of Science Commons, John Wilbanks, discusses how and why Science Commons is working to improve the flow of scientific knowledge so that complex scientific, technical, and medical problems can be solved more quickly.

Download the audio file (14:35 minutes; 13.9MB)

Following the recorded interview, Wilbanks agreed to answer just one more question, which we did not have time to include in the recording: Ellen Duranceau: I understand you majored in Philosophy as an undergrad. Is there is particular philosopher’s work that you draw upon to support his efforts with ScienceCommons?

Wilbanks responds: “Philosophy has turned out to be directly relevant to our work at Science Commons – the principles behind the Semantic Web are essentially the same as those investigated for centuries by philosophers from Hume to Plantinga. In terms of influence, I could list a dozen philosophers that have influenced one element or another of our work. I know that Thinh Nguyen, our counsel, is deeply influenced by the work of Daniel Dennett (and everyone involved in science should read Dennett’s “Darwin’s Dangerous Idea“). But I’m probably most influenced overall by Thomas Kuhn, who wrote “Structure of Scientific Revolutions” and introduced the idea of the paradigm shift.

Now, paradigm shift is a devalued phrase today. It is justly mocked in commercials and cartoons (the Simpsons do it justice above all) as a catch phrase for managers without a clue. And “Structure” is not a thrilling read. But the core arguments about how ideas emerge in science, are beaten down by the establishment, and have to force general changes in the overall knowledge structure of science – those arguments resonate deeply with me. And a huge part of what we’re trying to do at Science Commons is enable the overall acceleration of the cycles Kuhn describes, to make it faster and faster and faster for ideas that deserve to emerge to emerge, and to let as many people into the process as want to be there.

This mix of accelerating research cycles and increasing participation in science through lowered barriers means that we get more revolutions, faster. It’s one of the only non-miraculous approaches available to us. We need theoretical breakthroughs in fields across the sciences, we need more revolutions, and Science Commons is trying to deploy the infrastructure of knowledge and that can make those revolutions easier to achieve.”

The other episodes in the podcast series are available on the scholarly publication website.To subscribe to the MIT Libraries’ Podcasts on Scholarly Publishing, paste this link into iTunes or another podcast reader:.

We encourage and welcome your feedback, which you may direct to:

Ellen Finnie Duranceau / Scholarly Publishing and Licensing Consultant / efinnie@mit.edu

Radio airs every Friday at midnight from 12:00 AM to 2:00 AM (Pacific time) on KKLA (99.5 FM) in Los Angeles. If you are not in the L.A. area you can listen via the internet at . Give us a call on the air at 1-888-LA-TALKS (1-888-528-2557). Our shows are podcast weekly on Apple's iTunes. Click on the icon below to subscribe to our shows. If you do not use Apple's iTunes for podcasting, go to our RSS feed page by clicking here. Many of our shows are for sale at $1.99 at our store.

Upcoming Shows:

What: Making of an Atheist Radio Show

When: February 27, 2010

Time: 12:00 am (midnight) - 2:00 am

Radio Station: KKLA, 99.5 FM

Dr. James Spiegel, Professor of Philosophy and Religion at Taylor University, has recently published a book called The Making of an Atheist: How Immorality Leads to Unbelief – and it is powerful. This book, unlike other responses to the New Atheism (a la Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, and Hitchens), shows how atheists come to hold to their beliefs not because of the evidence at hand but because of the sin in their hearts – their unbelief is a function of their disobedience.

While Spiegel’s thesis is mainly concerned with the moral and psychological reasons for atheism, Spiegel’s treatment does deftly, if briefly, deal with the intellectual bankruptcy of atheism as well – making a solid rational case for theism. Such a case includes (but is not limited to) arguments from the fine-tuning, the laws of nature, and a recapitulation of Alvin Plantinga’s evolutionary argument against naturalism.

Building largely off of Paul Vitz’s Faith of the Fatherless (1999) and Paul Johnson’s Intellectuals (1988), Spiegel shows how so many famed and influential intellectuals (philosophers, economists, novelists and more) were often motivated toward their atheism either by markedly poor father figures (or absent fathers) or a strong desire to justify their immoral lifestyles – or both. While arguing for neither necessary causation nor deductive argumentation, Spiegel does a fine job to show how such correlations are more than merely accidental: they are born out of deliberate philosophies to justify their immorality – which in turn alters their ability to philosophize rightly about morality. Unbelief (atheism) leads to immorality and their immorality clouds their thinking, leading to misconceptions and further unbelief. In the end, atheism, argues Spiegel, is a matter of the will, not of the mind.

One of highest virtues of this book (and to be sure, there are many!) is Spiegel’s ability to recapitulate many of the most recent and powerful arguments and concepts in the academic market of ideas, simplify them, and identify their relevance in the discussion at hand – and his use of Thomas Kuhn’s concept of paradigm shift is but one example. He uses this notion to illustrate just how it is that atheists and theists can see the other as ‘delusional’ without the one party or the other recognizing its own delusion – how such incompatible worldviews could coexist in the same world. This incommensurable difference in paradigms accounts for what Spiegel calls “paradigm-induced blindness” which further entrenches a person in her own worldview. (Other concepts from which Spiegel draws and upon which he insightfully expands are William James’ ‘will to believe,’ Alvin Plantinga’s ‘proper function,’ and John Calvin’s ‘sensus divinitatus.’)

In the final chapter of his book, Spiegel writes on ‘The Blessings of Theism.’ Here, he explains how such things the right to complain, the privilege of giving thanks, and the health of the mind are all things which are afforded by the theistic worldview. So, not only is it right to believe, but it is good.

Spiegel’s The Making of an Atheist is a succinct yet powerful treatment of the deeper reasons for the new atheism – moral degeneration and psychological dysfunction. Written for the lay person but with an eye toward and involvement of academic literature, The Making of an Atheist invites the reader to a very important discussion on the issue the New Atheism and the Christian’s response to it.

Episode 2 - Lorraine Daston

Listen to How To Think About Science - Episode 2 ()

(runs: 51:56)

The Max Planck Institute for the History of Science () occupies an elegant and airy new building in a leafy suburb of Berlin. It houses approximately a hundred scholars whose research extends from medieval cosmology to the role of experiment in 19th century German gardening to the ways in which medical technology has reshaped the contemporary boundary between life and death. The director is American Lorraine Daston.

David Cayley interviewed her recently in her office at the institute, and told him that there was a time when she would not even have dreamed of a hundred historians of science under one roof. When she was a graduate student at Harvard in the 70’s, she says, the history of science was more a collection of strays from other disciplines than it was a discipline in itself. But a crucial challenge had been issued. In 1962 philosopher/historian Thomas Kuhn had published The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, the book that suddenly put the previously unusual word paradigm on everybody’s lips. Kuhn rejected the assumption of a continuous linear progress in science. And thereby, Lorraine Daston says, he framed the question with which her generation grew up, how to write the history of science as something other than a triumphant progress to a foregone conclusion.

This site has a number of articles on “how to think about science”.



Genius and Misfit Aren’t Synonyms, or Are They?

By G. PASCAL ZACHARY - Published: June 3, 2007



THE story of the college dropout who became the world’s richest man still has the power to inspire us. It affirms our deeply engrained view that rejecting the received wisdom (do my own thing!) is a path to creativity and wealth.

As Walt Whitman famously wrote 150 years ago, “I celebrate myself, and sing myself.” In our individualistic country, the strong, lone voice is often viewed as the animating force behind every kind of success.

This drive appears to power many technological innovators. In an era where one-size-fits-all solutions take hold for reasons of efficiency and winner-take-all economics, “misfits can thrive, because start-up companies are how misfits express themselves,” says Howard Rheingold, the author of “Smart Mobs,” which is about how the Internet allows strangers to act in concert.

Google, the hottest company on the planet as measured by media ink, is one of the latest examples of the power of the misfit. One co-founder, Larry Page, is enamored with the notion of “space elevators.” The other co-founder, Sergey Brin, is using $3.9 million of Google’s money to finance a genetic mapping company started by his wife. The two men are said to have outfitted a private company jet with hammocks and king-size beds. In short, these billionaires are hardly men in gray flannel suits.

I come today to praise the misfit innovator, “the loser now,” in Bob Dylan’s venerable lyric, who “will be later to win.”

Back to the dropout (from Harvard, no less), who is, of course, Bill Gates, a co-founder of Microsoft. His story is repeated again and again by weary innovators facing failure and by fresh-faced geeks just striking out for the endless frontier.

“The Gates example is so interesting because we Americans like to tell stories that remind us that establishments are close-minded,” says David A. Hollinger, a historian at the University of California, Berkeley.

The identification of technological innovators who have a rebellious streak — resenting and resisting established authority and its prejudices — took root in the 1960s counterculture. The ’60s-inspired inventors of personal computers and software, like Mr. Gates and Steven P. Jobs, co-founder of Apple (and an outright hippie in his youth), were bent on destroying a technological priesthood that stifled innovation.

At first, “I never expected to amount to anything,” says Steve Wozniak, who was languishing as a low-level engineer at Hewlett-Packard when he teamed up with Mr. Jobs to design Apple’s first computer.

Alienated by Hewlett-Packard’s emphasis on large, expensive and forbidding technical systems, Mr. Wozniak took hardware that was used to power toys and calculators and created a rival approach, personal computing, that ultimately took over the world. “All the ideas that mattered to me came from outsiders,” he recalls.

While inventive, these men did not create their sensibility out of whole cloth. They received a crucial assist from a historian of science named Thomas Kuhn, whose seminal 1962 book, “The Structure of Scientific Revolution,” neatly mapped the anti-establishment landscape of innovation.

Kuhn’s central insight, which fast became a cliché, was to identify “paradigm shifts” as the key to advances in science and technology.

Scientific world views were belief systems first and proved empirically only later. Facts had meaning only in relation to a “world view.” When world views were overthrown by rebels, new paradigms could be constructed, opening the way for new theories, new facts, new technologies.

As the London-based writer Ziauddin Sardar has noted, in the popular mind, Kuhn reduced science to “nothing more than long periods of boring conformist activity punctuated by outbreaks of irrational deviance.”

For people like Mr. Gates and Mr. Jobs, Kuhn’s attack on conformity in science and technology provided a moral and intellectual foundation that still survives.

Echoes of the Kuhnian sensibility can be heard around any corridor in Silicon Valley, any day of the week. In fact, misfits now rule Silicon Valley and its sibling, Seattle.

Sean M. Maloney, chief of sales and marketing at Intel, reminded me of this last month as he recalled a dictum that Andrew S. Grove, the company’s former chairman and chief executive, often invoked. When everyone says that something is true, be very skeptical, Mr. Grove advised. Question the obvious.

THAT is easier said than done, especially when corporations become so invested in their own “paradigm” that they grow blind to signs that “the times they are a-changin’.” How else to explain that Mr. Gates, writing in the first edition of his 1995 treatise on the future of computing, made no mention of the Internet, the very force that began to disrupt (and is still disrupting) his company’s core business from virtually the day the book appeared?

Similarly, Google must struggle to avoid falling so much in love with its wildly successful online search and advertising technologies that it misses the next inevitable and disruptive paradigm shift. “The reality is that world-changing amounts of money are earned by people who question orthodoxies,” Mr. Maloney said.

Does this mean the misfit is always worth betting on? Not really. The often-ignored side of the Kuhn theory is that for long stretches of time, the frontier of science and technology is ruled by diligent people who are quietly filling in the grand vision that spawned a new paradigm in the first place.

These people are heroes of their own sort, keeping the home fires burning until the reigning paradigm is played out. “The celebration of misfits promotes a worrisome anti-intellectualism and presents a distorted picture of the innovation process,” says Mr. Hollinger, the historian.

Indeed, technological innovation — not to mention new scientific knowledge — is increasingly a result of large teams, working in routine, predictable ways. Individuals matter, but their contributions often can no longer be measured, nor can credit be accurately apportioned — even by the people working closest with them.

Perhaps the steady rise in power by faceless teams of engineers, technicians and scientists explains the persistent romantic appeal of the lone misfit.

By any measure, successful misfits are the exception, and there is no handy tool for distinguishing the next college dropout with a bright and wealthy future from the dropout who faces a heap of woe.

G. Pascal Zachary teaches journalism at Stanford and writes about technology and economic development. E-mail: gzach@.

Malcolm Gladwell, The Talk of the Town, “"My Jaw Dropped",” The New Yorker, July 8, 1996, p. 32

ABSTRACT: Talk story about death of science writer Thomas Kuhn. Thomas Kuhn wrote "The Structure of Scientific Revolution" in 1962, for a long-forgotten series of monographs called the International Encyclopaedia of Unified Science, which is ironic, in retrospect, because Kuhn's masterpiece did not really unify science at all. It broke it open, exposing the inner workings of human creativity and starting, along the way, a thousand arguments that not even Kuhn's death, two weeks ago, at 73, will resolve. [Science] was [Kuhn wrote] "a series of peaceful interludes punctuated by intellectually violent revolutions." That this idea was intended to apply only to the natural sciences did not matter. It was so novel, so persuasive, and--upon the monograph's publication as a book, in 1970--so perfectly in the rebellious spirit of the times that it quickly became adopted as a kind of general theory of everything. Over the last 30 years, "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" has sold a million copies, an astonishing number for a work of serious scholarship. "Paradigm," the word Kuhn used to describe the intellectual order that was overthrown during periods of revolution, entered the language entirely on his terms. Kuhn's idea applied to physics, but it also profoundly influenced--and irritated--sociology, history, philosophy, and economics. To find a book of analogous impact, one would have to go back to Voltaire's treatise on Newtonian physics... Kuhn will be remembered because he taught that the process of science was fundamentally human, that discoveries were the product not of some plodding, rational process but of human ingenuity intermingled with politics and personality--that science was, in the end, a social process... "I gazed abstractedly out the window of my room," Kuhn wrote of the moment, in 1947, when while reading Aristotle he made his own great insight. "Suddenly the fragments in my head sorted themselves out in a new way, and fell into place together. My jaw dropped." Those who read "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" felt the same way.



Science Magazine Podcast

Transcript, 6 March 2009 show



(page 8) Interviewee – Alex Szalay

Well, the nature of how we do science is changing very dramatically as we speak, and

there have been several traditional scientific paradigms. And the first one was science

was empirical – we described nature. Then we tried to capture nature in equations, so

this was the analytical paradigm for science that started with Kepler's laws and kind of

culminated in the General Relativity of Einstein and the quantum field theories. And

then a new scientific paradigm emerged in the 50s that people called "computational"

where we tried to simulate the complex phenomena that were too complicated to solve

the equations, on computers. And what is recently emerging is something even more

interesting – we call this new paradigm e-science, or data-intensive science.



Sam Harris on Facts and Values on



comment: Sam Harris concluded: "My claim is that there are right and wrong answers to moral questions, just as there are right and wrong answers to questions of physics, and such answers may one day fall within reach of the maturing sciences of mind." As we learned from Thomas Kuhn even the changes in positive science can be understood as political. Not to mention social science...

Worldviews

Whether or not we realize it, we all have worldviews! We each have presuppositions that influence our outlook on life. A worldview has been compared to a lens which alters the way we view life and how we perceive the world we live in. There are a variety of worldviews. What is your worldview? Is your lens altering your outlook?

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Worldviews



Postmodern Science – Introduction

Postmodern science is “anti-science” in many respects. Some Postmodernists argue that science is not really knowledge at all. Instead, they speak in terms of chaos theory, the unpredictability of science, indeterminacy, or uncertainty of evolution/devolution, etc. For instance, Paul Feyerabend, former philosophy professor at the University of California (Berkeley) maintains that what is called science in one culture is called voodoo in another: “To those who look at the rich material provided by history, and who are not intent on impoverishing it in order to please their lower instincts—their craving for intellectual security in the form of clarity, precision, ‘objectivity,’ [or] ’truth’—it will become clear that there is only one principle that can be defended under all circumstances and in all stages of human development. It is the principle: anything goes.”1

In his article “Anything Goes,” Feyerabend further explains how science works. In the history of science many theories have arisen, been accepted as established, promoted as the truth, and then eventually discarded. When a scientist promotes scientific data in support of a theory, that bit of data is anything but neutral because the scientist has an agenda. In all fields of science questions remain open as scientific theories are regularly tweaked. And to top it off, the scientific establishment is very much politicized.2 Thus, scientists regularly work with unproven assumptions and filter all data through their preconceived ideas.

Postmodern Science – Theories of Indeterminacy

Postmodern doubts about the objectivity and neutrality of science arose in the mid-1900s from Michael Polanyi’s Personal Knowledge3 and Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolution.4 Kuhn, for example, points out that science is not merely a progressive and incremental discipline that studies and records facts. So-called facts can be understood and interpreted in a variety of ways depending on the worldview assumptions of the scientist.5

In addition, Kuhn asserts that scientific theories, or paradigms, do not often fall out of favor because they are proven wrong. Rather, older theories tend to die out along with their proponents, while new and creative theories attract the attention of younger scientists who, in turn, promote their theories over the older ones.6 A current scientific theory is just that: a current theory, which will be replaced by another current theory in the future. For that reason, science cannot tell us what is real, only what scientists believe to be the case at that particular time in history. This falls in line with the Postmodern concept that everyone, including the scientist, is locked into his or her particular culture and language, and thus cannot claim to have an objective picture of the world.

Postmodern Science – What’s Really Real, Anyway?

In the world of Postmodern science, even mathematics is not immune from Postmodern analysis. Doubts about the objectivity of math were brought to light with Douglas R. Hofstadter’s Pulitzer prize winning book Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, published in 1979.7 This theme has been developed in other works. In Ethnomathematics: A Multicultural View of Mathematical Ideas, Marcia Ascher asserts that much of mathematics education depends upon assumptions of Western culture. For example, she writes that no other culture “need share the categories triangle, right triangle, hypotenuse of a right triangle . . .” She further questions, “Is a square something that has external reality or is it something only in our minds?”8

However, even in light of the Postmodernist aversion to metanarratives and doubts about science being able to describe the real world, when pressed for an explanation concerning the origin of life Postmodernists will assume anything but creationism! For this reason, Postmodernists embrace the only other alternative—one of the several forms of evolution.

Postmodern Science – Inconsistent and Unreliable

Christians need not agree with the extreme conclusion that contemporary Postmodernists derive from Kuhn’s theories of indeterminacy. Although Christians acknowledge that scientists do have biases and presuppositions, we also assert that true knowledge about reality is possible. Philosopher J.P. Moreland explains the Christian position this way: “Science (at least as most scientists and philosophers understand it) assumes that the universe is intelligible and not capricious, that the mind and senses inform us about reality, that mathematics and language can be applied to the world, that knowledge is possible, that there is a uniformity in nature that justifies inductive inferences from the past to the future and from examined cases of, say, electrons, to unexamined cases, and so forth.”9

Saying much the same thing is Secular Humanist Paul Kurtz. In Humanist Manifesto 2000, Kurtz insists that rejecting objectivity is a mistake and that Postmodernism is counterproductive, even nihilistic. Kurtz writes, “Science does offer reasonably objective standards for judging its truth claims. Indeed, science has become a universal language, speaking to all men and women no matter what their cultural backgrounds.”10

Along the same lines, Lee Campbell, chair of the Division of Natural Sciences at Ohio Dominican College, writes, “The methods used in the sciences have produced powerful explanations about how things work and innumerable useful applications, including technology even its harshest critics would never be without.”11 Indeed, Postmodernists use all the comforts and conveniences that modern science and technology provide, yet at the same time deny the foundational premises on which science is established. This brings to light the contradictions within the Postmodern worldview and reveals it to be unreliable.

Postmodern Science – Conclusion

In contrast with the failed approach to Postmodern science, history confirms the reality and progressive reliability of the scientific method. In fact, modern science came about because of a biblical view of reality. Campbell writes, “The rise of modern science would have been impossible without Christian presuppositions that the universe is rational because it was created by a rational God.”12

In his book For the Glory of God, Rodney Stark details why Christianity (rather than Islam, Cosmic Humanism, or any of the atheistic Humanisms) is the worldview most responsible for modern science.13 Indeed, the father of modern science, Sir Francis Bacon, was a Christian, as were many of the leading scientists who founded the disciplines of chemistry, paleontology, bacteriology, antiseptic surgery, genetics, thermodynamics, computer science, and many other fields.14

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Notes:

Rendered with permission from the book, Understanding the Times: The Collision of Today’s Competing Worldviews (Rev. 2nd ed), David Noebel, Summit Press, 2006. Compliments of John Stonestreet, David Noebel, and the Christian Worldview Ministry at Summit Ministries. All rights reserved in the original.

1 Paul Feyerabend, “Anything Goes,” in Walter Truett Anderson, ed., The Truth About The Truth (New York, NY: Tarcher/Putnam Publishers, 1995), 199–200.

2 To understand how much of science has become politicized, see Tom Bethel’s The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 2005).

3 Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1974).

4 Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 3rd ed. (1962; Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1996).

5 Millard J. Erickson, Truth or Consequences: The Promise & Perils of Postmodernism (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2001), 106–7.

6 Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 16–19.

7 Douglas R. Hofstadter, Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, 20th anniversary ed. (1979; New York, NY: Basic Books, 1999).

8 Marcia Ascher, Ethnomathematics: A Multicultural View of Mathematical Ideas (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1991), 193.

9 J.P. Moreland,Christianity and the Nature of Science: A Philosophical Investigation (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1989), 45.

10 Paul Kurtz, Humanist Manifesto 2000: A Call for A New Planetary Humanism (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2000), 22.

11 Lee Campbell, “Postmodern Impact: Science,” in Dennis McCallum, ed., The Death of Truth, (Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House, 1996), 193.

12 Ibid.

13 See Rodney Stark, For the Glory of God (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003).

14 For a detailed list, see “The Worlds Greatest Creation Scientists: From Y1K to Y2K” at .

Notes from the Psychedelic Salon

Quotes, comments, and audio files from Lorenzo's podcasts

Podcast 031 – “In the Valley of Novelty” (Part 5)

31:28 Terence talks about how science emerged/evolved from mysticism and mythology, mentions Thomas Kuhn’s book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, and tells the story of how René Descartes founded scientific materialism at the behest of an angel.



Thomas Kuhn Quotes:

Crisis alone is not enough. There must also be a basis, though it need be neither rational nor ultimately correct, for faith in the particular candidate chosen.

Thomas Kuhn

It is, I think, particularly in periods of acknowledged crisis that scientists have turned to philosophical analysis as a device for unlocking the riddles of their field. Scientists have not generally needed or wanted to be philosophers.

Thomas Kuhn

Normal science does not aim at novelties of fact or theory and, when successful, finds none.

Thomas Kuhn

Rather than being an interpreter, the scientist who embraces a new paradigm is like the man wearing inverting lenses.

Thomas Kuhn

The crises of our time, it becomes increasingly clear, are the necessary impetus for the revolution now under way. And once we understand nature's transformative powers, we see that it is our powerful ally, not a force to feared our subdued.

Thomas Kuhn

The historian of science may be tempted to exclaim that when paradigms change, the world itself changes with them.

Thomas Kuhn

Under normal conditions the research scientist is not an innovator but a solver of puzzles, and the puzzles upon which he concentrates are just those which he believes can be both stated and solved within the existing scientific tradition.

Thomas Kuhn

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