Kuhn vs Popper - About James H. Collier

Mannheim sets the precedent for Kuhn’s ‘PlanckEffect’, that is, the explanation of paradigm changeby inter-generational succession – a problem thatclearly plagued the Positivismusstreit’s reception.The locus classicus for this still under-developed areaof sociology is Mannheim’s ‘The Problem ofGenerations’ (1928), republished in his Essays in theSociology of Knowledge (London: Routledge, 1952).The locus classicus for negative responsibility isJ.J.C. Smart and Bernard Williams, Utilitarianism:For and Against (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1973), pp. 93–100. Williams, as antiutilitarian,introduces the concept in order tocritique it, in favour of a proto-Rortyan ethic of thelife-project. Williams’ critique focuses on twohypothetical cases that seem inspired by Cold Warintrigue, one involving a scientist’s decision toengage in weapons research. Some excellent scenesettingfor Cold War academia are John McCumber,Time in the Ditch: American Philosophy in theMcCarthy Era (Evanston: Northwestern UniversityPress, 2001); Philip Mirowski, Machine Dreams:Economics Becomes a Cyborg Science (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 2001). The problemsfacing contemporary historians trying to make senseof this period are surveyed in The Historiography ofContemporary Science and Technology, ed. ThomasSöderqvist, (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Pub-226