科学革命的结构读后感

科学革命的结构的读后感

Chapter 2

 Paradigms are theories created by one of the pre-paradigm schools. Though the author gives description rather than explanation of the arduous process of acquiring paradigms, we can conclude that when some theories are universally accepted, and can attract an enduring group of adherents away from competing modes of scientific activity, paradigms that prove able to guide the whole group’s research emerge all of a sudden.
 The emergence of a paradigm contributes to scientific inquiry in seven aspects. First, it makes both fact collection and theory articulation highly directed activities, so scientists no longer explore nature casually or at random. Second, it suggests which experiments will be worth performing so scientists are confident what they are studying is highly relevant. Third, the end of interschool debate ends the constant reiteration of fundamentals. The confidence that they are on the right track encouraged scientists to undertake more precise, esoteric, and consuming sorts of work. Fourth, it transforms a group previously interested merely in the study of nature into a profession or a discipline. Fifth, it marks the beginning of specific classification. Sixth, it creates advanced systems that improve effectiveness and efficiency, in particular, for esoteric work. Above all, it produces scientific community whose members push on to more concrete and recondite problems, and increasingly they report their results in articles addressed to other electricians.
 Ultimately, the emergence of a paradigm is invariably followed by a truth boom, as truth emerges more readily from error than from confusion.

Chapter 3

 Although paradigms have shown to be particularly revealing of the nature, the match between facts and theories is still imperfect, and scientists have to avoid approximations and obtain satisfactory agreements.
 To do this, they need to answer the following questions. First, how to conduct empirical works to articulate the paradigm? Second, what further explorations relative to theoretical works can they make to classify theoretical problems of normal science? Third, how to use existing theories to predict factual information of intrinsic value?
 All their efforts serve for the reformulation of a paradigm: to articulate the paradigm elegantly and logically in mathematics, which is both theoretical and experimental. The desire for acknowledgement and the ambition for fame ensure scientists to pursue the same goal. Driven by anthropic ultimate curiosity about the nature, they are committed to solve the problems after the acquisition of the paradigm. 
 The problems always exist, as a successful paradigm is not, however, to be either completely successful with a single problem or notably successful with any large number.

Chapter 4

  What are characteristics of normal science?
  Normal science shares paralleled characteristics with puzzle-solving. First, it offers challenging problems as puzzles that can test ingenuity or skill in solution and thus drive scientists on. Second, the criterion of these problems is the assured existence of a solution, but on the contrary, has nothing to do with the intrinsic value of their outcome. Third, these puzzles are invariably so attractive that scientists attack them with remarkable passion and devotion, holding the conviction that, if only they are skillful enough, they will succeed in solving a puzzle that no one before has solved or solved so well. It is very much the same thing as a child is immersed in solving crossword puzzles that may not give him any benefit.
  Above all, like puzzle-solving, normal science has rules. In the same way as all the pieces must be used before you solve a jigsaw puzzle, until certain conditions have been satisfied, no problem can be solved. Rules play the role of established viewpoint or preconception that bound the admissible solutions to theoretical problems. Under the influence of rules, scientists adopt the attitude that the results of their researches must fall into a narrow range that the paradigm restricts. As a child must obey rules in his games without fail, all these rules have undoubtedly held for scientists at all times.

Chapter 5

  We can account for the priority of paradigms in four aspects. First, rules are abstracted from their more global paradigms and deployed. However, the existence of a paradigm is independent on the existence of rules and need not even imply that any full set of rules exists.
  Second，paradigms can be determined easily, and they can determine normal science directly without the intervention of discoverable rules or assumptions. They are more binding and more complete when it comes to the definitions of basic concepts. Thanks to paradigms, we can understand what makes a particular problem or solution legitimate almost intuitively.
  Third, in the absence of rules, normal science can still proceed under the guidance of paradigms that direct research. As long as paradigms remain secure, however, they can function without agreement over rationalization or without any attempted rationalization at all.
  Fourth, Explicit rules, when they exist, are usually common to a very broad scientific group, but paradigms need not be. They are quite irrelevant and related to each other to a very limited extent, so they need not stand or fall tegother.
  In a nutshell, rules cannot exhaust all functions of paradigms and it is flexible and subject to change. While paradigms might be intangible and artificial, they have absolute dominance over rules.

Chapter 6

 I want to give my account of crisis at the close of a paradigm.
 The close of a paradigm is noncumulative as the threat it face is abruptly posed by a problem that the paradigm fails to solve. After all efforts to reconcile this problem with the paradigm are in vain, this novelty will be claimed incompatible with the basic assumptions of the paradigm. Crisis then occurs with destructive changes in beliefs about nature. Scientists pronounce their failure in saving the paradigm from breakdown, and feel obliged to desert it. A crisis is an occasion for retooling because the tools supplied by the original paradigm prove uncapable of solving all problems. 
 In my opinion, the use of “crisis” is reasonable in a second way. Scientists run the risk of being wrong when they persuade themselves to make the tough decision to convert their beliefs. Together with science, scientists themselves are passing through a grave crisis.

Chapter 7

 In this chapter, Kuhn discusses response to crisis.
 Kuhn first lists two reasons for doubting that scientists reject paradigms because confronted with anomalies. First is that scientists do not renounce the paradigm that has led them into crisis while they consider alternatives and second is that they can actually devise numerous articulations to eliminate any apparent conflict.
 So why do scientists reject paradigms? He notes that to reject one paradigm goes hand in hand with substituting another. Scientists see puzzles as a source of crisis only when from another viewpoint. To make this possible, an anomaly must usually be more than just an anomaly. Kuhn applies a few examples to illustrate how the transition to crisis and to extraordinary science is evoked. 
 Kuhn claims two effects of crisis are universal and crisis are noncumulative. In the end, a transition from normal to extraordinary research results in scientific revolution, which, from my perspective, is the ultimate response to crisis.

Chapter 8

 Kuhn brings up a question:” Why should a change of paradigm be called a revolution?” and outlines the parallelism between scientific and political revolution.
 First, he describes the feature of a scientific revolution: it is noncumulative and the paradigms involved are incompatible. The striking similarity between the characteristics regarding the process of political revolution and scientific revolution are that they begin with a growing sense that existing systems have ceased to meet certain problems. The awareness breeds dissatisfaction. They aim to change the status quo in ways that are prohibited.
 Second, like competing political institutions, competing paradigms proves to be fundamentally incompatible modes. Paradigmatic differences cannot be reconciled.
 Third, the assimilation of either a new sort of phenomenon or a new scientific theory must demand the rejection of an older paradigm, which would make scientific revolution genuinely cumulative otherwise.
 Fourth, Kuhn refutes logical positivist view, arguing that the logical positivist view makes any theory ever used by a significant group of competent scientists immune to attack.
 In the end, since paradigms cannot settle their differences. It is inevitable that they will talk through each other. The results of debates are determined by external criteria. And this recourse to external criteria most obviously makes paradigm debates revolutionary.