Kuhn vs Popper - About James H. Collier

means by which people become scientists. HereKuhn relies on the cognitive psychology of his dayto liken both the initial acquisition and anysubsequent shift in paradigms to a conversionexperience or ‘Gestalt switch’, whereby one comesto see the world in a systematically different way.These running themes in a book that clearly extolsthe conservative character of science led Popper andhis followers to cast Kuhn as a fellow-traveller ofreligious and political indoctrinators.But of course, this was not how Structure was readby most of its admirers – if they actually did read thebook. For while Kuhn’s examples are drawn almostexclusively from the physical sciences, these are thedisciplines that have probably paid the leastattention to Structure, even though Kuhn himselfwas qualified only in physics. Kuhn’s admirers areto be found instead in the humanities and the socialand biological sciences. Throughout his career,Kuhn claimed nothing but ignorance of thesefields. Indeed, Kuhn identified his Eureka moment– when his theory of paradigms finally gelled – asoccurring when he witnessed the vast difference inthe way social and physical scientists conductarguments. No matter how much physicists disagreedon the value of a particular piece of research,they could always agree on an exemplar againstwhich to judge it. This was not possible in the social21