Kuhn vs Popper - About James H. Collier

the uncharted domain. This rather late 19thcenturyconception of the textbook, tied to theconsolidation of French and German nationaluniversity systems locked in imperial struggle, isthe preferred Kuhnian medium for the transmissionof paradigm-based knowledge. Like otherfeatures of the model of scientific change presentedin The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, this uniquedevelopment is then generalised over the entirehistory of science.So, what then happened to Humboldt’s originalideal of ‘unity of teaching and research’?Humboldt’s vision was first expressed in an essay,Ideas toward a Definition of the Limitations on StateAction, composed when he was only 25, nearly twodecades before the peak of his influence in thePrussian Ministry of Education. This striking workportrayed the university as the place where peoplewould acquire the skills they need for selfempowerment,which would then enable them toparticipate as active citizens in democratic assemblies.In the long term, the state would ‘witheraway’ from its current overbearing paternalismto a purely administrative organ dedicated toimplementing the considered judgements of thepopulace.Humboldt’s ideal of the university as weaningcitizens off their dependency on state power, itself133