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Structure of the Scientific Revolution book review
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is a good book. I read all kinds of books in college. I used to read mostly humanities and philosophy books and history books, but one day I started to like science books. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions may not be strictly speaking a science book, but it left me with a lot of very meaningful ideas and broadened my horizons.
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세상 모든 것은 과정일 뿐이다
Is there really a “right answer” to life? Like a well-crafted math problem, it would be great if there was a right answer, and if we could just follow the formula and arrive at the right answer, but unfortunately, life doesn’t have a right answer. Whether you’re an enlightened saint or a daily struggling office worker, life is an endless series of problems.
In “The Revolution in the Structure of Science,” Thomas Kuhn (cute name, Kuhn, Kuhn, Kuhn, Kuhn) also says that “there are no right answers.” By his logic, even the science we thought was the clearest and most rational is only a limited, temporal set of answers constructed within a paradigm.We can’t solve problems that exist outside of the paradigm because the answers don’t exist without restrictions and assumptions, and in order to solve them, we have to give up the “right answer” and go beyond the paradigm. Only in a hypothetical situation where there is no outside world can a correct answer be created. In other words, there is no ‘truth’, only ‘progress’. On the one hand, this can be seen as a skeptical and relativistic view because it denies the existence of ‘truth’, but the idea that everything in the world, including science, is just a ‘process’ is meaningful, at least to me.
토마스 쿤 vs. 칼 포퍼
Kuhn’s ideas in philosophy of science have sparked a number of debates, most notably the Kuhn vs. Karl Popper (Lacanian) debate, which is as famous as a New York Yankees-Red Sox game. (If you’re wondering what’s so fun about arguing, just watch the movie Frost vs. Nixon – you could make a movie out of it.)
Kuhn’s debates with the positivists, and Kuhn’s debates with Popper and Lacan, are both war and intellectual play, in that they are constantly attacking and refuting each other’s logical holes. How cool is it to have opponents?Their debates dialectically pushed each other forward, and in the process Kuhn’s “structure of the scientific revolution” was further refined. But if you were to ask me which side I think is right, I would have to be Hwang Hee Jung-Seung. “Onya, Kuhn is right and Popper is right.”
I’m not a fan of either the yangshi theory or the yangbi theory but their logic has opposing sides, but in a grand sense, they are both concerned with the same thing, so both sides can be right, even if they don’t have an answer, if they are solving the problem in the right way.
They are making a similar argument about Buddhist practice. In Buddhism, there are two ways of practicing. Zen Buddhism emphasizes the process of sudden enlightenment, called “Don’o,” while Kyodo Buddhism emphasizes the process of “Soteri,” which means learning the doctrines step by step and gradually attaining “knowledge.It doesn’t matter how you do it, either way, there is always another enlightenment waiting for you, and what matters is the “process,” which is the unrelenting pursuit of enlightenment, even if you choose a different methodology.
The debate over Kuhn is similar: whether science is a process of accumulation or a dramatic paradigm shift with a “bang!” is not the crux of the matter; what matters is that both sides emphasize “process” without assuming absolute truth.
Transition-era logic
In the previous story, I said that everything in the world is a process, and the important thing in the ‘process’ is the ‘direction’, and the ‘direction’ is created by the ‘public opinion’ and it is right to go in the direction that promotes the ‘public interest’ (right does not mean the right answer. It means desirable.) Here again, Kuhn’s concept of ‘paradigm’ comes into play. What if the ‘public debate’ that we think is key is actually shaped by paradigms? Again, borrowing from Kuhn, we cannot go beyond the worldview of a paradigm if we live within it. Like scientists who believe in “normal science” within a particular paradigm, we cannot imagine a different paradigm. In this way, the question of the mystery is excluded and we are simply stuck with solving the problem.
In reality, we live in a paradigm of ‘democracy’ and ‘capitalism’. In this context, the public debate we think about can only be within the framework of democracy and capitalism. This means that we can only recognize ‘democracy’ or ‘market’ as a given constant and consider options within it.
The problem is that neither ‘democracy’ nor ‘capitalism’ is the right answer. We are currently facing a “crisis of democracy” and a global “financial crisis”. This is because in our blind faith in a particular paradigm, we have failed to see the limitations of the upcoming paradigm. In Kuhnian terms, we are facing a “crisis” of “normal science”.
So what do we do? Do we discuss this ‘crisis’ within the framework of ‘normal science’ once again? Or do we move to a different paradigm? Kuhn would say that we should move to a different paradigm. (Many of those calling for the end of “neoliberalism” are close to Kuhn’s position.) But you can’t be sure that the road less traveled is the right one. The road less traveled may be the road to regression. The Soviet Union moved beyond capitalism and adopted the communist paradigm, but in the end it turned out to be a regression. Therefore, we should not hastily declare the end of the current system, but carefully gather “public opinion”. We need to face the current crisis, clearly recognize the limitations of the current paradigm, and explore alternatives together. Of course, there is no right answer. Nor can they be predicted. But socially consensual direction ensures “process” justice. If we don’t know the future, we have to live in the present. The “process” of the present will create the wisdom to overcome the crisis. It’s time to think more flexibly, cross paradigms, and prepare for paradigm shifts.
Thomas, K. (1962). The structure of the scientific revolution Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
