Overnight Thomas Kuhn
Two quotes from Thomas Kuhn’s academic powder keg of a book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions:
From page 90:
“Almost always the men who achieve these fundamental inventions of a new paradigm have been either very young or very new to the field whose paradigm they change. And perhaps that point need not have been made explicit, for obviously these are the men who, being little committed by prior practice to the traditional rules of normal science, are particularly likely to see that those rules no longer define a playable game and to conceive another set that can replace them.”
And this from pages 137-138:
“Textbooks thus begin by truncating the scientist’s sense of his discipline’s history and then proceed to supply a substitute for what they have eliminated. Characteristically,textbooks of science contain just a bit of history, either in an introductory chapter or, more often, in scattered references to the great lessons of an earlier age. From such references both students and professionals come to feel like participants in a long-standing historical tradition. Yet, the textbook derived tradition in which scientists come to sense their participation is one that, in fact, never existed. For reasons that are both obvious and highly functional, science textbooks (and too many of the older histories of science) refer only to that part of the work of past scientists that can easily be viewed as contributions to the statement and solution of the text’s paradigm problems. Partly by selection and partly by distortion, the scientists of earlier ages are implicitly represented as having worked upon the same set of fixed problems and in accordance with the same set of fixed canons that the most recent revolution in scientific theory and method has made seem scientific.No wonder that textbooks and the historical tradition they imply have to be rewritten after each scientific revolution. And no wonder that, as they are rewritten, science once again comes to seem largely cumulative.”
I read this book a decade ago after repeatedly coming across references to it in various papers on economics. The latter quote struck a chord due to the ludicrous textbook racket prevalent on college campuses. Textbook authors, due to their unique position of supplying what in economics is known as a “captive customer”, or captive market, are in possession of a veritable golden goose, skinning students’ parents for several hundred dollars per book. Of course, a new “edition” of the textbook is issued every year, ensuring that the gravy train will never end. And of course these textbook authors and those that teach from their works do a disservice to young scientists-to-be by implying that nothing more need be learned beyond the textbook.
If there is one thing that should never have a home in scientific inquiry, it is “tradition”, because more often than not it is a tradition artificially imposed upon young minds, a tradition that never actually existed. It’s imposition serves the purpose of pushing heterodox thinkers to the fringes, not to be taken seriously. When tradition is enforced from above, it needs a priesthood to do the enforcing. Pushing out the heretics, coddling the obedient and penitent, and distributing the funding to those who will carry on the tradition.
All this reminds me of another quote, from chapter 8 of William Stanley Jevons’ 1871 treatise, The Theory of Political Economy:
“To me it is far more pleasant to agree than to differ; but it is impossible that one who has any .regard for truth can long avoid protesting against doctrines which seem to him to be erroneous. There is ever a tendency of the most hurtful kind to allow opinions to crystallise into creeds. Especially does this tendency manifest itself when some eminent author, enjoying power of clear and comprehensive exposition, becomes recognised as an authority. His works may perhaps be the best which are extant upon the subject in question; they may combine more truth with less error than we can elsewhere meet. But ” to err is human,” and the best works should ever be open to criticism. If, instead of welcoming inquiry and criticism, the admirers of a great author accept his writings as authoritative, both in their excellences and in their defects, the most serious injury is done to truth. In matters of philosophy and science authority has ever been the great opponent of truth. A despotic calm is usually the triumph of error. In the republic of the sciences sedition and even anarchy are beneficial in the long run to the greatest happiness of the greatest number.”
