Thomas S. Kuhn and Scientific Revolutions

I came across my book and saw this amazing article, I figured "it would be nice if everyone could also enjoy it". So, here you go guys!

When scientist talk about science, we often talk in ways that imply that our theories are "true". Further, we talk as if we arrive at theories in logical and unbiased ways. For example, a central theory to chemistry is John Dalton's atomic theory - the idea that all matter is composed of atoms. Is this theory "true"? Was it reached in logical, unbiased way? Will this theory still be around in 200 years?

The answers to these questions depend on how you view science and its development. One way to view science - let's call it the traditional view - is a continual accumulation of knowledge and the building of increasingly precise theories. In this view, a scientific theory is a model of the world that reflects what is actually in nature. New observations and experiments result in gradual adjustments to theories. Over time, theories get better, giving us a more accurate picture of the physical world.

In the twentieth century, however, a different view of scientific knowledge began to develop. In particular, a book by Thomas Kuhn, entitled The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, challenged the traditional view. Kuhn's ideas came from his own study of the history of science, which he argues, does not support the idea that science progresses in a smooth cumulative way. According to Kuhn, science goes through fairly quiet periods that he calls normal science. In these periods, scientist make their data fit the reigning theory, or paradigm. Small inconsistencies are swept aside during periods of normal science. However, when too many inconsistencies and anomalies develop, a crisis emerges. The crisis brings about a revolution and a new reigning theory. According to Kuhn, the new theory is usually quite different from the old one; it not only helps us to make sense of new anomalous information, but also enables us to see accumulated data from the past in a dramatically new way.

Kuhn further contends that theories are held for reasons that are not always logical or unbiased, and that theories are not true models - in the sense of a one-to-one mapping - of the physical world. Because new theories are often so different from the ones they replace, he argues, and because old theories always make good sense to those holding them, they must not be "True" with a capital T, otherwise "truth" would be constantly changing.

Kuhn's ideas created a controversies among scientists and science historians that continues to this day. Some, especially post modern philosopher of science, have taken Kuhn's ideas one step further. They argue that scientific knowledge is completely biased and lacks of any objectivity. Most scientists, including Kuhn, would disagree. Although Kuhn points out that scientific has arbitrary elements, he also says,

"Observation [...] can and must drastically restrict the range of admissible scientific belief, else there would be no science"

In other words, saying that science contains arbitrary elements is quite different from saying that science itself is arbitrary.

Taken from Chemistry: A Molecular Approach By Nivaldo J. Tro.