Kuhn vs Popper - About James H. Collier

scientific research from German to Americanacademia in the 1920s, as chairman of the Harvardchemistry department. Conant was also fully awarethat many excellent students like Kuhn whounderwent scientific training at the start of WorldWar II to pursue philosophical questions by lowtechmeans would be disappointed by the scaled-upspecialised work of ‘Big Science’ that awaited themat the end of the war. The General Education inScience programme was created with them specificallyin mind. There they could impart to students avision of science that focused on self-directedcognitive change, with science’s political-economicentanglements playing a distinctly secondary role.Conant reasoned that the more future policymakerscould see the hand of Maxwell or Einstein inan expensive and risky research project, the morelikely science’s autonomy would be preserved inits increasing involvements in the Cold War’smilitary-industrial complex.Kuhn, of course, wanted to promote much thesame vision as Conant, but mainly because itcaptured his original reason for pursuing science asnatural philosophy by more exact means. Moreover,Conant and Kuhn overlapped not only intheir overall vision of science but also in at leastone means of realising that vision, namely, themanufacture of student course materials to bring204