On Kuhn's "Revolutions"

Revolutions are often violent, bloody catastrophes that conclude in worse conditions than those before; but those are cultural and political revolutions. Scientific revolutions can be just as devastating, but in a much less physical way. The scientific historians have long viewed science as continual, gradual. However, the idea of scientific revolutions (events that fundamentally change how a sciences functions), has proved much more accurate. In Thomas S. Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, he attempts to explain the excess validity of scientific revolutions as opposed to the “myth” of progress. The purpose of this essay is to explain how Kuhn, in his book, attempts to indulge our minds with evidence for scientific revolutions and counter-evidence of gradual progress.

Kuhn frequently mentions several “revolutions,” but here we will only focus on the Copernican Revolution. This chain of events has lead directly to the modern world, and is rightly so labeled a revolution—a cultural revolution. Alas! This is also a scientific revolution. For over a thousand years, only one way to view the entire Cosmos was accepted. The Ptolemaic model of a geocentric universe had the planets (from Mercury to Saturn), the Sun, and the Moon orbiting in perfect circles and epicycles around a stable Earth with stars affixed to the bastion and citadel of the sky. It was serene, harmonious, and calm. Nothing happened without the direct intervention of a god, or several gods; and later it was just God. Yet, after a seriously depressing slumber, Europe awoke and Nicolas Copernicus developed an idea that he could not prove. His idea was this: the Earth, and the planets, went around the Sun. Simple, yes, but profoundly earth-shattering. It was against conventional wisdom, and contradicted observation. But his theory could be proven. It was Galileo who, with the telescope, proved this theory. This resulted in the entire transformation of the way the science of astronomy was practiced. The old ideas of epicycles and divine intervention where thrown out the window into a bonfire. The accepted way of carrying out astronomy was demolished.

In the book, Kuhn brings forth the paradigm concept. What is a paradigm? A paradigm is the accepted way of doing normal science. When a science encounters a crisis—say, the discovery of moons around Jupiter, when Jupiter should have no moons—several things happen. First, the older and more experienced practitioners push it aside as an anomaly. The young, less experienced members recognize the significance of the “anomaly” and pursue it against the advice of their mentors. It is the young scientists not burdened by old customs and thus able to solve the crisis at hand; when solved, the solution might call for an entire reordering of the science. Many will convert, some will fight and then convene, a few will hold out and live out their lives in disgrace because they could not accept the cold, hard truth which is at the heart of science. That process, of casting out an old paradigm for a new one, is called a paradigm shift. Kuhn expresses and constructs his essay specifically to fit his purpose.

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions lays out the details and concepts of paradigms and their shifts. Kuhn builds his essay like a J-curve graph; each chapter building up exponentially until about three-fourths through when in chapter IX he actually discusses the makeup of revolutions and their necessity. He structures his chapters in a way that makes it accessible to the laymen and women, and thus allows his evidence to come across more clearly. Furthermore, he breaks down each concept into its bare elements; he goes simpler than the bones and tissues, simpler than the atoms, down to the subatomic particles. Albeit, he doesn’t always use the simplest language, he does simplify the ideas, concepts, and theories.

As this book ages, it does not age as say, a political film might age. As this book ages, and as centuries pass, this book will be looked upon and revered because its author so serenely confident in its conclusion, and that that conclusion is fundamentally right. Reading this book gives assurance to the reader that science is rather akin to evolution. Evolution is a slow process taking millions of years to show evident change, however, as this slow gradual progress occurs; there takes place occasional, yet severe and devastating catastrophes.

These cataclysms rapidly change the way life is lived and what life forms dominate the Earth this time around. Notice any parallels? You may draw a similarity that these catastrophes (technically known as mass extinctions), are biology’s revolutions of paradigm shift. Thus, the periods between the mass extinctions are the periods in which normal life are lived out; much like normal science is the science done during a stable and secure paradigm. Revolutions tend to be bloody and violent and end worse off than before, like the French Revolution. But scientific revolutions are a change in order—like a change from monarchy to constitutional monarchy—and like the American Revolution don’t end in violence, but in end in a new way of “seeing” the world and the Universe it dwells within.