Читать книгу Culture Clash - Steven Goldberg H. - Страница 12

The starting point for modern critiques of the idealistic view of science is Thomas Kuhn’s enormously influential The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.⁸ Kuhn introduced the idea of a paradigm—a model, such as Newtonian physics, that is powerful and successful in explaining phenomena and attracting adherents, while sufficiently open-ended to leave problems that researchers can work on.⁹ Those who work within an established paradigm do not challenge its basic nature. They labor instead to solve the scientific puzzles that come up within the paradigm’s assumptions. Kuhn refers to this “puzzle-solving” activity as “normal science.”¹⁰ But over time, research results may challenge a paradigm itself. There then may be a revolutionary change—a paradigm shift—to a new paradigm, such as Einsteinian physics.

It is vital to remain clear where this account does and does not challenge the classic view of science. “Normal science” presents no such challenge; indeed, Kuhn himself describes normal science as “a highly cumulative enterprise, eminently successful in its aim, the steady extension of the scope and precision of scientific knowledge. In all these respects it fits with great precision the most usual image of scientific work.”¹¹ It is with the paradigm shift that Kuhn sees something new, because “[t]he transition from a paradigm in crisis to a new one from which a new tradition of normal science can emerge is far from a cumulative process, one achieved by an articulation or extension of the old paradigm. Rather it is a reconstruction of the field from new fundamentals, a reconstruction that changes some of the field’s most elementary theoretical generalizations as well as many of its paradigm methods and applications.”¹²

Under the circumstances, according to Kuhn, choices between an old and a new paradigm “can never be unequivocally settled by logic and experiment alone.”¹³ The data will often largely fit either paradigm, at least in the early stages of the revolution, and choices must be informed by other factors. Some suggest, for example, that a theory’s “simplicity” will attract scientists to it, a possibility that introduces a “nagging subjectivity” into the decision as to what counts in favor of a hypothesis.¹⁴ Kuhn has argued that a theory will be judged in part by whether it is fruitful in the sense of setting forth a new research agenda,¹⁵ another factor that departs from a strict emphasis on laboratory results.

Kuhn’s notion of paradigm shifts has not gone unchallenged by historians of science, some of whom still maintain that science proceeds in increments rather than through revolutionary shifts.¹⁶ But even within Kuhn’s approach it is remarkable how much of the traditional model of science is preserved. This is sometimes obscured when people toss around the notion of “paradigm shift” outside of the natural sciences, and find such shifts on a monthly basis with little to choose between the old and the new paradigm. This is not the sort of thing Kuhn was writing about, and those who read The Structure of Scientific Revolutions in its entirety find that Kuhn marveled at the coherence of the scientific community, a community that ultimately reaches consensus on which paradigm should be followed. Thus, to Kuhn, the vital questions at the end are, “Why should progress also be the apparently universal concomitant of scientific revolutions? … Why should scientific communities be able to reach a firm consensus unattainable in other fields?”¹⁷ Kuhn speculates that the key is precisely that choices in science are made not “by heads of state” or “the populace at large,” but rather by a “well-defined community of the scientist’s professional compeers.”¹⁸

After Kuhn, and to some extent independent of his work, other scholars have applied deconstructionist techniques in an effort to show that scientific knowledge is as culturally contingent as any other kind.¹⁹ In this literature also, however, there is recognition that the scientific community is remarkably adept at defining itself and at adjudicating what is and is not good science from its own professional perspective.²⁰ Indeed, the argument that scientific knowledge is “constructed” and thus not objectively true in some ultimate philosophical sense strengthens rather than weakens the role of the scientific community in self-definition. The critique does open the door to alternate accounts of what ought to be considered good science, but those accounts have had remarkably little impact in the mainstream scientific community or in public perceptions of that community.

In any event, it is not necessary to resolve the ultimate philosophical status of science to proceed with our inquiry. The scientific community will never persuade everyone that its approach is a sure route to any ultimate reality. Skeptics, from the ancient Greeks to the present, have asked whether science tells us more about the outside world or about ourselves. Scientists may put great emphasis on testable propositions, but whether one should do that is not itself testable. What we can say is that in our society today science is a remarkably well-defined activity with a vigorous band of practitioners who do experiments (not philosophy) and who appear to accumulate vast knowledge about the natural world. It also appears beyond reasonable doubt that this scientific community is of great importance to American society at large.

Thus the central reality from our perspective is that the scientific community in America today is a self-governing republic. Scientists, not governments or voters, decide what is good and what is bad science. Entrance into this scientific community depends on rigorous professional training, whereas high standing in that community is evidenced by membership in groups such as the National Academy of Sciences and the science faculties at major universities. The scientific community is not equally united on all issues. There are cutting-edge issues on which scientists are deeply divided or at least concede that science has not as yet reached a clear conclusion. In other areas, however, scientists are, if not unanimous, then nearly so. The scientific community retains its internal authority by agreeing that if individuals disagree on too many of these basic points, they are expelled from the community. It is barely possible to be a member in good standing of the American scientific community today if you disbelieve in evolution or believe in laetrile. It is impossible to be a member if you hold both views.²¹