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IT IS NOW ALMOST TWENTY YEARS since I first distinguished what I took to be two types of scientific development, normal and revolutionary. Read the first page
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To me, the interview is the most interesting part of the book, mainly because it's autobiographical. I am told by people who knew him that, after the hullabaloo over STRUCTURE, Kuhn became quite reticent, at least in public, and certainly about himself. Well, reticent is the last thing he is in this interview. He speaks quite openly about his parents, his early education, his attraction to physics, his time at Harvard, his decision to move from physics to philosophy and history of science, the issues in history and philosophy of science that moved him most deeply, his opinions of colleagues. In this interview, Thomas Kuhn becomes a person, not merely an icon. It's surprising, moving, and instructive, and anyone who's ever wondered about the man who wrote THE STRUCTURE OF SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTIONS will find the interview, as well as the essays in this book, well worth the read. Enjoy! And wonder!
Metaphor of "evolutionary epistemology" (ch. 4). The faith of rival organisms (=rival theories) is determined by the relative fitness of each, not by comparing them with an ideal organism (=absolute truth). One cannot assess the evolutionary benefit (=truth) of a particular trait (=proposition) without knowing to which organism (=theory) it belongs. Organisms, like theories, need not fit a static, immutable world; rather their world is largely defined through their own actions. Scientific theories fly south in the winter, as it were. Progress is often possible only by narrowing the niche, i.e., through speciation (=specialisation).
Linguistic incommensurability (ch. 2). Interpretation does not equal translation. One can learn a second language (or a rival scientific theory) as one learned the first, by immersion. But that does not imply the ability to perfectly translate between them (or effect an objective comparison). Attempts at reference-preserving translation will always be flawed whenever there is a mismatch of taxonomies, both because a single concept in one language (or theory) typically maps to several concepts in the other or fails to map at all, and because the hierarchy of classes and subclasses in the taxonomy of a language is necessarily projected onto the world when the world is described in this language.
Relationship between history of science and philosophy of science (ch. 5). Kuhn says of the historical trend in philosophy of science that "one can reach many of the central conclusions we drew with scarcely a glance at the historical record itself" (p. 111). What is needed is not actual history, but the realisation that theories are judged only comparatively. A number of well-known implications follow (difficulties for truth and realism, possibility of incommensurability, etc.) which are usually attributed to a historical approach. On the other hand: "I don't think that the [philosophers] who were doing history ... saw everything in it that I was seeing in it. They were not coming back and asking 'What does this do to the notion of truth, what does it do to the notion of progress,' or if they did, they were finding it too easy to find answers that seemed to me superficial." (pp. 311-312).
First, as anyone who's read "Structure of Scientific Revolutions" knows, Kuhn has no talent for clear writing. Nothing's changed since. These essays, although more concise and to the point (perhaps that's Kuhn having learned his lesson) are still difficult reads. The first section, I think, is the book's 'payoff'. It is here that he reiterates, clarifies and expands on what is and is not scientific revolution, incommensurability and paradigm. Two essays in particular, "What are Scientific Revolutions?" and "The Road Since Structure" are worth the price of the book alone.
The second section consists of replies to Kuhns many and in an ideological sense, far ranging critics. Most of these papers were written for symposia and are difficult in the sense of listening to only one end of a phone dialogue. As he is generally responding to papers of others, without access to those papers, it is akward reading to say the least. Still, for those of us scientific philosophy nuts, the essays "Reflections on My Critics" (part of a symposium featuring Lakatos, Popper and Feyerabend amongst others) and "The Natural and the Human Sciences" are excellent illucidations of Kuhns thought.
Honestly, the interview, I didn't like. Much of it is Thomas Kuhns history and as for the reviewer below that bemoans a self-absorbed Kuhn talking about himself and his "intellectual project", I'm not sure what else you should expect from an interview of a philosopher. Interviewers like to ask about the interviewee and philosopher's like to talk about what they work on. Honestly though, if you are at all familiar with Kuhns life, this interview offers little that you didn't already know.
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