Summary - Lecture 11, 12 - Theory of Kuhn\'s Positivism PDF

Preview

Summary

THeory of Kuhn's positivism...

Description

Science as privileged world view?

1. Contrast – Religion as means by which individuals and communities to construct and make sense of the world around them (natural and social terms) 2.

Rise of the Age of Enlightenment – rejected religion as a valid and reliable mean of understand and making sense of the world. Religious belief and tradition vs science and reason.

3. Positivism – 1) Comte – science as the interactions between the physical world and the social world – draws objective, unchangeable laws within the physical world – demonstrate how the same laws exist in the social world and how these be rationally measured and explored. 2) Durkheim – the existence of social facts – study of suicide – elements of the social world – unchangeable – exist within casual relations and regardless of societal conditions 4. Arguments on positivism – 1) conservatives – intense favouring of scientific method – view as elitist – science as a superior body of knowledge 2) expert elite who are educated in sciences should make important decision – elitist and technocratic 5. Popper – falsifiability – scientist seeks out ways to disprove their work – more reliable – falsify a theory because there is nothing we are certain of – black swan analogy – because we have always seen white swans coming from the river bend, it does not proved that a black swan will appear next time. 6. liberal – how this would translate into the social and political life – highlights qualitative similarities between scientific and non-scientific stand point, pointing out the lack of courage in both communities fail to falsify their theories – placing neither methods or thought in a privileged position than anthoner. 7. Kunn – the concept of paradigm – scientists armed with their paradigm – assumption under which scientists operate and the tools for them to understand observed data. 8. Science is operated within a cycle, normal science operates under a paradigm – a crisis occurs when there are reasonable amount of evidence to oppose the paradigm  a revolution then occurs – leads to a new paradigm where normal science continues to run under the new paradigm. 9. Science is puzzle-solving – scientists can use existing paradigm to solve puzzles pertaining to observations made 10. Unique world view which shapes how we see reality – social conventions

11. Arguments: Non-progressive due to the reluctance of accepting anomalies in science unless a reasonable amount of evidences are collected. Anti- accumation 12. Conservative thinkers – based science on traditional paradigm. 13. Feyerbend – anarchist account – no fixed methods nor there are any paradigms for scientists to see the world. lack any defining essence – Datas only fudged to fit theories....