Science, Strategy and War The Strategic Theory of ... - Boekje Pienter

investigated and a change of the rules of scientific practice 59 . In this fashion Kuhn argues,Ptolemaic astronomy was replaced by the new paradigm of Copernicus. Euclidian geometryand Newtonian physics are paradigms in other fields 60 . A scientific revolution corresponds tothe abandonment of one paradigm and the adoption of a new one, not by an individualscientist only but by the relevant scientific community as a whole. While Popper looked atscientific progress within a paradigm, Kuhn thus looked at scientific progress as a successionof paradigms.These paradigms are “incommensurable”. Different paradigms have no commonstandard for comparison. Each paradigm will regard the world as being made up of differentkinds of things. Rival paradigms will regard different kinds of questions as legitimate ormeaningful. Indeed, Kuhn argues that there is a sense in which proponents of rivalparadigms are “living in different worlds”. And because of the fundamental different set ofstandards and metaphysical principles, there will be no purely logical argument thatdemonstrates the superiority of one paradigm over another and that thereby compels arational scientist to make the change 61 .Kuhn does not dismiss the value of normal science. Periods of normal scienceprovide the opportunity for scientists to develop the esoteric details of a theory therebyimproving the match between the paradigm and nature to an ever-greater degree. However,as there is no way to tell in advance which theory will hold up to scrutiny, science shouldcontain within it a means of breaking out of one paradigm into a better one. And this is thefunction of revolutions. Chalmers explains Kuhn in terms that could have taken directlyfrom Boyd’s presentations Destruction and Creation and The Conceptual Spiral when he assertsthat according to Kuhn all paradigms will be inadequate to some extent as far as their matchwith nature is concerned. When the mismatch becomes serious, that is, when a crisis develops,the revolutionary step of replacing the entire paradigm with another becomes essential forthe effective progress of science 62 .Thus, progress - as improved understanding of real world phenomena - depends onthe Popperian notion of problem (also a mismatch) solving within a paradigm as on theKuhnian emphasis on discovering of mismatches between a paradigm and reality. JohnHorgan adds to the idea that Boyd incorporated Kuhnian insights by noting first that Kuhnheld that ‘a revolution is a destructive as well as a creative act’, and, second, that:Kuhn described himself as a “post-Darwinian Kantian”. Kant too believed that withoutsome sort of a priori paradigm the mind cannot impose order on sensory experience. Butwhereas Kant and Darwin each thought that we are all born with more or less the sameinnate paradigm, Kuhn argued that our paradigms keep changing as our culture changes 63 .In Boyd’s work these notions are already apparent in Destruction and Creation. Directlyreferring to Kuhn’s 1970 edition of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions Boyd includes arendering of the Popperian dynamics of science within a paradigm:the effort is turned inward towards fine tuning the ideas and interactions in order to improvegenerality and produce a more precise match of the conceptual pattern with reality. Toward59 Ludwig von Bertalanffy, General Systems Theory (George Brazilier, New York, 1969), p.18.60 Steinbrunner, p.11.61 Chalmers, pp.115, 121.62 Ibid, p.118, emphasis mine to highlight the connection with Boyd’s use of wording.63 Horgan, pp.41, 42. Incidentally, this book was also on Boyd's reading list at the time of his death in1997.92