Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Kuhn’s Way

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Popper and His Popular Critics

Part of the book series: SpringerBriefs in Philosophy ((BRIEFSPHILOSOPH))

  • 1826 Accesses

Abstract

The histories of Kuhn are above average, as he did not conceal controversy and error. Regrettably, he played them down. Unfortunately, he viewed dissent increasingly as verbal variance, considering general assent to him essential for his becoming a scientific leader. He declared obligatory the endorsement of dogmas of scientific leaders, yet he declared agreement with too many contending philosophers as he had no power over them and he never discussed the question, how do leaders achieve it. Following Polanyi, he suggested that the leaders are the best, yet he himself gained power from his mentor, Harvard president James Bryant Conant. His philosophy had many gaps that he filled with commonsense ad hoc. Yet on induction he was in a minority (with Conant and with Popper) and thus contrary to most of the philosophers of science of his day. He also borrowed traditionalism from Polanyi and incommensurability from Duhem. He did not really need it; he had no theory of truth and no alternative to common inductivism, instrumentalism and Einstein’s approximationism, all of which he rejected. His critique of approximationism is his best, but it does not live up to its promise. Nonetheless, his influence was beneficial.

Anything printed is ipso facto out of date. (Whittaker 1913, 26).

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
eBook
USD 16.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 16.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Bibliography

  • Adam, A.M. 1992. Einstein, Michelson, and crucial experiment revisited. Methodology and Science 25: 117–128.

    Google Scholar 

  • Agassi, Joseph. 1957. Duhem versus Galileo. The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 8: 237–248 (Reprinted in Joseph Agassi, The gentle art of philosophical polemics: selected reviews and comments, 1988).

    Google Scholar 

  • Agassi, Joseph. 1966. Review of T, S, Kuhn, The structure of scientific revolutions, J, Hist, Philos, 4: 351–354 (Reprinted in Joseph Agassi. 1988. The gentle art of philosophical polemics: selected reviews and comments, Peru, IL: Open Court).

    Google Scholar 

  • Agassi, Joseph. 1967. The Kirchhoff-Planck radiation law. Science 56: 61–67 (Reprinted in Joseph, Agassi. 1993. Radiation theory and the quantum revolution. Switzerland: Birkhäuser).

    Google Scholar 

  • Agassi, Joseph. 1977. Towards a rational philosophical anthropology.

    Google Scholar 

  • Agassi, Joseph. 1983. The structure of the quantum revolution. Philosophy of the Social Sciences 13: 367–381.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Agassi, Joseph. 1987. Twenty Years After. In Nancy Nersessian, ed., The Process of Science: Contemporary Philosophical Approaches to Understanding Science. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 95–103; also in Organon, 22/23, 1987, 53–61 and in Meta-history of Science at the Berkeley Congress, Warsaw: Ossolineum Publishing House of the Polish Academy of Science, 1988.

    Google Scholar 

  • Agassi, Joseph. 1988. The future of big science. Journal of Applied Philosophy 5: 17–26.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Agassi, Joseph. 2008. Science and its history: a reassessment of the historiography of science.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bacon, Sir Francis. 1620, 1960. The new Organon and related writings.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bendix, Reinhard. 1970. Embattled reason: essays on social knowledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Buchdahl, Gerd. 1965. A revolution in historiography of science. History of Science 4: 55–69.

    Google Scholar 

  • Budworth, David. 1981. Public science, private view.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bunge, Mario. 2001. Philosophy in crisis: The need for reconstruction.

    Google Scholar 

  • Burke, Dolores L. 1988. A new academic marketplace.

    Google Scholar 

  • Carnap, Rudolf. 1963. Replies. In The philosophy of Rudolf Carnap, ed. Paul A. Schilpp, LaSalle: Open Court.

    Google Scholar 

  • Carnap, Rudolf. 1966. Philosophical foundations of physics.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cohen, I. Bernard. 1954. Some recent books in the history of science. Journal for the History of Ideas 15: 163–192.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cohen, I. Bernard. 1956. Franklin and Newton, an inquiry into speculative Newtonian experimental science and Franklin’s work on electricity as an example thereof.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cohen, I. Bernard. 1987. Revolutions in science. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cohen, Robert. S., P.K. Feyerabend, and M.W. Wartofsky. eds. 1976. Essays in memory of Imre Lakatos.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cohen, Robert S., and L. Laudan, eds. 1983. Physics, philosophy and psychoanalysis: essays in honor of Adolf Grünbaum.

    Google Scholar 

  • Conant, James Bryant. 1963. The education of American teachers.

    Google Scholar 

  • Conant, James Bryant. 1964. Shaping educational policy.

    Google Scholar 

  • Crombie, A.C. ed. 1963. Scientific change: historical studies in the intellectual, social and technical conditions for scientific discovery and technical invention, from antiquity to the present: symposium on the history of science Oxford, 9–15 July 1961.

    Google Scholar 

  • Danhof, Clarence H. 1968. Government contracting and technological change.

    Google Scholar 

  • Duhem, Pierre. 1914, 1954. The aim and structure of physical theory (trans: Philip P, Wiener).

    Google Scholar 

  • Einstein, Albert. 1954. Foreword to Max Jammer, Concepts of space, The history of theories of space in physics.

    Google Scholar 

  • Elam, Stanley. ed. 1964. Education and the structure of knowledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Finkelstein, Martin J. 1984. The American academic profession: a synthesis of social scientific inquiry since World War II.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fuller, Steve. 1989. Philosophy of science and its discontent.

    Google Scholar 

  • Graetz, T.F. ed. 1979. Rationality today.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ginev, Dimitri, and Robert S. Cohen. ed. 1997. Issues and images in the philosophy of science: Scientific and philosophical essays in honour of Azarya Polikarov.

    Google Scholar 

  • Guerlac, Henry. 1954. Review of D, McKie. Lavoisier, Isis 45: 58–59.

    Google Scholar 

  • Guerlac, Henry. 1961. Lavoisier: the crucial years: the background and origin of his first experiments on combustion in 1772.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hacking, Ian. 1993. Working in a new world: the taxonomic solution.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hahn, L.E., and P.A. Schlipp. ed. 1986. The philosophy of W. V. Quine.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hanson, Norwood Russell. 1964. On the structure of physical knowledge. In Elam, 1964, 148–187.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hempel, Carl G. 1979. Scientific rationality: analytic vs, pragmatic perspectives, in Graetz, 1979.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hempel, Carl G. 1983. Valuation and objectivity in science, in Cohen and Laudan, 1993.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hershberg, James G. 1993. James B, Conant: Harvard to Hiroshima and the making of the nuclear age.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hesse, Mary B. 1963. Review of T, S, Kuhn. The structure of scientific revolutions, Isis 54: 286–287.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hintikka, Jaakko. ed. 1975. Rudolf Carnap, logical empiricist.

    Google Scholar 

  • Horwich, P. ed. 1993. World changes: Thomas Kuhn and the nature of science.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hull, David. 1999. The use and abuse of Sir Karl Popper. Biology and Philosophy 14: 481–504.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kowarski, Lew. 1977. New forms of organization in physical research after 1945. In Wiener 1977: 370–401.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kuhn, Thomas S. 1962a. The structure of scientific revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kuhn, Thomas S. 1963. The function of dogma in scientific research and discussion, in Crombie, 1963, 347–69, 386–395.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kuhn, Thomas S. 1966. Review of Towards an Historiography of Science, by Joseph Agassi. The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 17: 256–258.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kuhn, Thomas S. 1962, 1970. The structure of scientific revolutions.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kuhn, T. 1970a. Logic of discovery or psychology of research. Lakatos and Musgrave, eds.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kuhn, T. 1970b. Reflections on my critics. Lakatos and Musgrave, eds.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kuhn, Thomas S. 1977. The essential tension: selected studies in scientific tradition and change.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kuhn, Thomas S. 1978. Black-body theory and the quantum discontinuity. 1894–1912.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kuhn, Thomas S. 1984. “Revisiting Planck”, Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences 14: 231–252.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kuhn, Thomas S. 2000. The road since structure: philosophical essays, 1970–1993, with an autobiographical interview. James Conant and John Haugeland, eds., viii + 325. Chicago: Chicago University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lakatos, Imre and Alan, Musgrave. eds. 1970. Criticism and the growth of knowledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Laudan, L. 1983. The demise of the demarcation problem. Cohen and Laudan 1983: 111–127.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lipset, Seymor Martin, and David Riesman. 1975. Education and politics in Harvard.

    Google Scholar 

  • McKie, Donald. 1952, 1962. Antoine Lavoisier, London: Colliers.

    Google Scholar 

  • Murzi, Mauro. 2001. Rudolf Carnap, internet encyclopedia of philosophy. Retrieved from http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/c/carnap.htm.

  • Polanyi, Michael. 1958. Personal knowledge: towards a post-critical philosophy.

    Google Scholar 

  • Polanyi, Michael. 1962. The republic of science. Minerva 1: 54–73.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Polanyi, Michael. 1963. Comments (on Kuhn’s paper), in Crombie, 1963, 375–380.

    Google Scholar 

  • Polanyi, Michael. 1967. The tacit dimension.

    Google Scholar 

  • Polanyi, Michael. 1969. Knowing and being.

    Google Scholar 

  • Popper, Karl. 1945. The open society and its enemies. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Popper, Karl. 1972. Objective knowledge, an evolutionary approach. Oxford: Clarendon.

    Google Scholar 

  • Price, Derek J, de Solla. 1961. Science since Babylon.

    Google Scholar 

  • Quine, Willard V.O. 1986. Reply to Jules Vuillemin. In Hahn and Schlipp, 619–622.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sankey, Howard. 1997. Kuhn’s ontological relativism, In Ginev and Cohen, 305–320, 1997.

    Google Scholar 

  • Scheibe, Erhard. 1997. The problem of reduction in special relativity, In Ginev and Cohen, 321–342, 1997.

    Google Scholar 

  • Shimony, Abner. 1976, 1993. Comments on two theses of Thomas Kuhn. In Robert S. Cohen et al. 1976 and in his 1993.

    Google Scholar 

  • Shimony, Abner. 1993. Search for a naturalistic world view.

    Google Scholar 

  • Toulmin, Stephen. 2001. Return to reason.

    Google Scholar 

  • Van Gelder, Lawrence. 1996. Thomas Kuhn, New York Times, 19 June.

    Google Scholar 

  • Vuillemin, Jules. 1986. On Duhem’s and Quine’s theses. In Hahn and Schlipp, 595–618.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wedberg, Anders. 1975. Decision and belief in science. in Hintikka, 161–181.

    Google Scholar 

  • Weinberg, Alvin M. 1963. Criteria for scientific choice. Minerva 1: 159–171.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Whittaker, E.T. 1913. Reports of the British Association.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wiener, C. ed. 1977. History of twentieth century physics.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ziman, John. 1968. Public knowledge: An essay concerning the social dimension of science.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zuckerman, Harriet. 1988. Sociology of science. In Handbook of sociology, ed. Neil Smelser. Chap. 16, 511–574.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Tel Aviv University, 69978, Tel Aviv, Israel

    Joseph Agassi

Authors
  1. Joseph Agassi
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Joseph Agassi .

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2014 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Agassi, J. (2014). Kuhn’s Way. In: Popper and His Popular Critics. SpringerBriefs in Philosophy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-06587-8_8

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation