Kuhn vs Popper - About James H. Collier

own aversion to Hegel’s authoritarian tendencies, itwas left to Lakatos to make the connection explicit:the idea that a social group – be it a culture or ascience – has proprietary rights over a domain ofreality is ‘irrational’ because of the asymmetrybetween what is purported objectively and subjectivelyabout the domain in question: knowledge isalleged to be objectively true without beingsubjectively true – that is, a minority has exclusiveaccess to what is supposed to be applicable toeveryone. In short, what is universally true is notalso universally known as true. Under the circumstances,knowledge becomes an instrument forconcentrating, rather than diffusing, power: ameans of domination rather than liberation.In science, this sense of ‘irrationality’ is mostevident in its slavish adherence to track record –what Popper demonised as ‘induction’ – wherebythe sheer fact that a particular discovery was madeunder the aegis of a particular theory is used as thebasis for claiming that only upholders of that theoryhave proper access to that discovery. The logicalpositivists tried to address the problem of trackrecord by proposing a neutral observation languageinto which all knowledge claims could betranslated. Accordingly, healthy sense organs andrudimentary calculative skills are all you need tojudge such claims for yourself. You need not be53