Author: Joe Besogn
Date: 07:52:19 11/06/00
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On November 06, 2000 at 10:41:01, Fernando Villegas wrote: >On November 06, 2000 at 09:58:56, Joe Besogn wrote: > >>You are, imo, running round in circles due to the usual reasons of vested >>interests, but also because you argue without even a basic understanding of the >>terminology. >> >>Try: http://cgi.student.nada.kth.se/cgi-bin/d95-aeh/get/kuhneng >> >>for a concise description of Kuhn's ideas in the "History of Scientific >>Revolutions". >> >>Then, perhaps, there might be some interest in reading what you have to say on >>the subject amongst the more enlightened. >> >>The descriptions in the article, imo, almost exactly mirror actions and progress >>within computer chess. That's imo. >> >>Although you are unlikely to reach agreement on new/old paradigms, existence of, >>or whatever, at least you'll have some new agreement on what words mean. That >>helps. >> >>Also useful for you will be the realisation that a paradigm is not a 'chess >>playing computer program', but a 'system of thought'. The fact that it is >>possible to take a conventional chess program and apply new ideas to it, does >>not mean that a paradigm shift has not taken place. The revolutionary shift is >>in 'ways of thinking' or in 'world view' - rather more difficult than changing >>code. The paradigm shift, therefore, is in you, in your own head. Some make this >>shift faster than others, one revolutionary starts it off, some see it soon, >>some see it later, some never see it at all. The ones that don't see it, deny it >>exists. The ones that do see it, say "you need to think different". The ones who >>see it late claim "it's evolutionary, I could do that". >> >>Why do I always try to help them ?! > >Hi. >You are right that sharper definitions of words helps, but not so much and not >always is neccesary, anyway. There is room, in a casual debate as those >performed here, to some fuzzy logic. I think every one here -or almost- knows >how radical a "paradigm" is, but nevertheless we all understand that, when >Thorsten uses it here, he is just referring to a more modest thing: a new way >to understand how to program certain functions of a chess program. In that sense >the word is useful and it would be a kind of pedantry to argue againts him on >the base of the exact definition of what a paradigm is. Besides, to define words >tends only to open another field of debate instead of solving it. How much >radical a new way of thought has to be to be a paradigm? Exception made of some >clear cases -copernican vs tolomean astronomical vision- the issue ios tricky >anyway. >Regards >Fernando According to Kuhn, science is not the steady, cumulative acquisition of knowledge. Instead, it is "a series of peaceful interludes punctuated by intellectually violent revolutions." And in those revolutions, it is where, "one conceptual world view is replaced by another." For example, Einstein's theory of relativity could challenge Newton's concepts of physics. Lavoisier's discovery of oxygen could sweep away earlier ideas about phlogiston, the imaginary element believed to cause combustion. Galileo's supposed experiments with wood and lead balls dropped from the Leaning Tower of Pisa could banish the Aristotelian theory that bodies fell at a speed proportion to their weight. And Darwin's theory of natural selection could overthrow theories of a world governed by design. As a result of these revolutions came Kuhn's Normal science and Crisis science. Normal science according to Kuhn is considered the paradigm and in the paradigm there consist the exemplar, theory, tacit (learning by practices), and the anomalies. The exemplar is the set of procedures or rules that prove or disprove the paradigm. Normal science extends the paradigm to new examples. But sometime the exemplar does not bring about the truth, it does not prove the paradigm. This is where Kuhn's second theory comes into play. Kuhn's second theory is the Crisis theory. The Crisis theory comes into play when the exemplar becomes an anomaly. Anomaly occurs when an exemplar does not prove that paradigm. Kuhn's crisis theory is that, use what went wrong in the exemplar, the anomaly, and create a new exemplar. Kuhn argued that the typical scientist was not an objective, free thinker and skeptic. Rather, he was a somewhat conservative individual who accepted what he was taught and applied his knowledge to solving the problems that came before him. The problem was that the typical scientist did not question how and why. In so doing, Professor Kuhn maintained, "these scientists accepted a paradigm--and archetypal solution to a problem, like Ptolemy's theory that the Sun revolves around the Earth." Generally conservative, scientists would tend to solve problems in ways that extended the scope of the paradigm. In such periods, he maintained, scientists tend to resist research that might signal the development of a new paradigm, like the work of the astronomer Aristarchus, who theorized in the third century B.C. that the planets revolve around the Sun. But, Professor Kuhn said, situations arose that the paradigm could not account for or that contradicted it. The new paradigm cannot build on the one that precedes it, he maintained. It can only supplant it. The two, he said, were "incommensurable."
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