Study questions for Kuhn, Chapters IX – XIII

(Thanks to Tim Spurgin, U. of Kansas)

1. In chapter nine, Kuhn compares scientific revolutions to political ones. How, according to Kuhn, are these two things similar, and how are they different?

2. What is Kuhn trying to say about the relationship between Newton and Einstein? What do earlier scholars seems to have said about that relationship, and why does Kuhn disagree with them?

3. What does Kuhn have in mind when he says that "paradigms prove to be constitutive of the research activity" (109)? What does he mean when he says that "something like a paradigm is prerequisite to perception itself" (113)?

4. Why does Kuhn refuse to say that Aristotle and Galileo interpreted the same thing in different ways? Why does he insist on saying that they actually saw different things?

5. On page 126, Kuhn spends some time talking about epistemology. Why does Kuhn think that "the epistemological viewpoint that has most often guided western philosophy for the last three centuries" is in a state of crisis? Does Kuhn present himself as having devised a new sort of epistemology? What alternatives to the older, crisis-ridden epistemology is he able to imagine--and how does he seem to feel about them?

6. In chapter eleven, Kuhn turns his attention to science textbooks. What does he think is wrong with most textbooks? What does he mean when he says that textbooks not only make history look linear and cumulative but also render scientific revolutions invisible?

7. At the beginning of chapter twelve, Kuhn considers two different ideas about how scientific theories are adopted and/or discarded. What are these ideas, how do they differ, and what does Kuhn think of them?

8. On page 170, Kuhn tells us that he hasn't used the word "truth" since page 18. Why hasn't he used it? What does his reluctance to use it tell us about his larger argument, his overall view of science?

9. Does Kuhn think that scientists make progress or not? On page 170, he says that they do make a "sort of" progress? What sort of progress would that be?