Kuhn vs Popper - About James H. Collier

ecause, when they succeed, one learns one hadbeen sick before. No wonder the techniques areresisted and the nature of the change disguised inlater reports.Thomas Kuhn, ‘Reflections on My Critics’Contemporary theories of knowledge rarely makereference to their religious roots. Nevertheless,these roots are indelibly marked in the philosophicaltendency to think of beliefs as compelled byevidence rather than made by decision. Somephilosophers even claim that it is psychologicallyimpossible to decide to believe something. At best,such a decision is a pretence to belief (that is, toact ‘as if’ something were true); at worst, it istantamount to wishful thinking. Clearly ‘belief’ ismeant to be a rather profound state of mind, apartial revelation of the truth, no mere hypothesisadopted out of expedience or for the sake ofargument. The problem of knowledge then revolvesaround the search for some foolproof method, orcriterion, for assessing the evidential quality ofbeliefs.Suspicion toward the role of decisions in beliefformation goes back to the distinctive Christianstate of heresy, which derives from the Greek for‘decision’, specifically where one chooses to affirmsomething contrary to what one knows to be the112