https://hsm.stackexchange.com/questions/187/examples-of-kuhn-loss

I'll refrain from adding my ignorance to your poll, but looking at the above, the losses seem small compared to the gains, which makes sense for the greedy accumulative instincts of scientists. Just because speculators sometimes make losses, that does not entail that cumulatively, they do not make profits.

Yep, if I'm not grooming one person for greater and greater responsibilities in my company but instead swapping people with better other people, how could we call that progress? A doesn't become B, and B, C; this would be progress. Au contraire, B replaces A, just as C replaces B. Not progress! :snicker:

I think this another good, accessible read:

https://www.acs.org/content/dam/acsorg/education/whatischemistry/landmarks/lavoisier/antoine-laurent-lavoisier-commemorative-booklet.pdf

Obviously in favor of the revolution -- and really, why not? It's born some good fruits (and some bad ones too...)

But I don't know if I'd be willing to say progress was exactly what happened in the revolution. I remember watching a documentary about Newton's fascination with alchemy -- not just Newton's research but was there a loss of knowledge just by this switch distinctly opposed to alchemy?

Also, even within the pamphlet, it's interesting to note that Lavoisier looked to the youth in his arguments -- so, insofar that the youth do not listen to their elders, it'd seem that there'd be a Kuhn-loss there -- but one that's not easy to demonstrate (just thinking about how much knowledge my own mentors had retained, but hadn't really shared except verbally)

That's interesting. I don't see very much loss there, aside from the loss of face of the old guard of alchemy, and for poor Lavoisier, his whole head. There does seem to be a connection between the French Revolution and the Chemistry revolution though - conservatives cannot adapt and radicals are unstable - the same old story. I suppose people like to think that science is above such human frailties, and perhaps it is, when conducted by the gods.

I agree that I don't see much loss... I wonder if the amount of loss matters?

Or, maybe there's a way to demonstrate loss academically -- going back to see if there really are records and such that you could try and decipher to compare -- so the amount that it matters could be determined by academics, while we merely interested persons could at least learn that science isn't immune to human frailty.

It may not matter in the long run, but I'd say that Kuhnian loss -- even of a small variety -- goes against some version of scientific progress. I believe we'd agree here.

But the judgment of degree isn't easy to say, I think. It's a historical counter-factual, so... at best imaginative guesses informed by reality and patterns.


I think one of the reasons Kuhn is interesting to read is he was crossing the boundary between scientific and historical thought, and somehow managed to write a text that almost blended the two. (but failed, ultimately)

I think one of the reasons Kuhn is interesting to read is he was crossing the boundary between scientific and historical thought, and somehow managed to write a text that almost blended the two. (but failed, ultimately) — Moliere

Are there useful points of comparison in this between Kuhn and Feyerabend?

From theories of gravity, something which I'm more familiar with, I'd say that scientific theories seem to progress in such a way that the older ones are special cases of newer ones.

To illustrate, the calculation of relative velocity involves the use of the Lorentz factor, but at nonrelativistic speeds, it tends to zero and can be ignored completely.

From theories of gravity, something which I'm more familiar with, I'd say that scientific theories seem to progress in such a way that the older ones are special cases of newer ones.

To illustrate, the calculation of relative velocity involves the use of the Lorentz factor, but at nonrelativistic speeds, it tends to zero and can be ignored completely. — Agent Smith

Hilary Putnam makes a distinction between scientific equations and worldviews:

“Theories in a mature science typically include earlier theories as limiting cases. But it is important to notice that what they include as limiting cases are the equations of the earlier theories, not the world-views of these theories. There is no sense in which the world-view of Newtonian physics is a "limiting case" of the world-view of general relativity, or a "limiting case" of the world-view of quantum mechanics. There is no more evidence that science converges to one final world-view than there is that literature or morality converge to one final world-view.”

Theories (Newton's & Einstein's) contradict Putnam, oui monsieur?

Newtonian relative velocity is a limiting case of Einstein's:

Einsteinian relative velocity for two objects travelling towards each other with velocities v and u = u + v + f

Newtonian relative velocity for the same two objects above is u + v only, because f $\approx$ 0.

There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement. — Lord Kelvin

Are there useful points of comparison in this between Kuhn and Feyerabend? — Tom Storm

I think so. Feyerabend was clearer than Kuhn, especially on incommensurability.

But I think I'm coming around on The Structure of Scientific Revolutions -- one of the problems I've had in talking Feyerabend is feeling like I have to explain Popper first. Feyerabend is technically clearer, but requires more background. Kuhn, on the other hand -- while the text isn't super clear, it's not reliant upon a dialogue either.

I think this is the sort of ideal that scientists aspire to. One can even interpret Aristotle's physics in Newtonian language as a limiting case of Newtonian physics -- objects falling in a fluid do fall at different rates, and the heavier ones tend to displace fluids faster so, in that limited sense, it was a correct statement, with a different explanation.

What do you make of this? https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/thomas-kuhn/#KuhnEarlSemaIncoThes

It directly addresses this line of thinking.

The phenomenon of Kuhn-loss does, in Kuhn’s view, rule out the traditional cumulative picture of progress. The revolutionary search for a replacement paradigm is driven by the failure of the existing paradigm to solve certain important anomalies. — Moliere

Of course, it depends on how you define progress and if this can be done in a way that something noncontingent is IN the progress. Kuhn's paradigms refer to science, but the question is begged: what is science's progress really about, that is, what is it that is progressing forward? If it is merely anomalies that turn up in normal science, and these are simply to be taken as constructions upon constructions, and there is no foundation to be "discovered" then you have the endless permutations of an infinite and evolving yet aimless science; apart from the localized settings of categorically assigned meanings, going no where.
But then you have the actual world, the that-which-is-not a language setting at all, or better, that which appears in a language setting (everything) but reveals itself to be wholly other than language. If the search is for something noncontingent (and I think it does come down just to this) that is, if you will, in the fabric of the experiential basis for scientific observation and work, and not simply a derivative idea born out of paradigmatic normalcy, then the answer lies apart from the language.

This goes to a more basic inquiry into language and the world: is there something in our midst, as responsible thinkers committed to the scientific method (I think is was Putnam who coined the term :hypothetical deductive method. But he got this pragmatic notion from, was it Peirce? Dewey?) that is PRIOR to science itself? And by prior I mean presupposed. Of course: it is the foundational intuitive landscape of experience itself. Here we find value, affectivity, the ethical/aesthetic dimension of the world.

Herein lies the answer to your thinking: science makes progress in an objective and noncontingent way is it progresses toward greater value. As to how this works is a further matter, of course, entangled as value is to factual affairs. But the presence of this value dimension that stands in the midst of scientific inquiry (for what does not stand in this way?) does reveal something Kuhn did not consider (though I haven't read everything he wrote) in the equation of replacement paradigms.

@Moliere

I can only applaud a man - Kuhn - who can see his own blind spots! This superpower has been on my wish list since god knows when! It hasn't been ticked off yet! :groan:

Anyway, in a thread that's at least a year or so old, I had brought up an issue that I still can't wrap my head around. To gain extra accuracy (mathematically more decimal places), contrary to my intuitions that all that was needed was to input more accurate measurments of physical quantities, what's actually required is to invent an entirely new theory whose equations seem to be sufficiently different from the equations of the older theory (vide Newton & Einstein in re gravity & motion) to make me go huh?! WTF?!

I decided to go ahead and vote "Yes" because some losses seem reasonable.

I wonder about the notion of "paradigm". Would the so-called "quantum revolution" count in spite of being a common example of a paradigm? Couldn't you just see these are two physics, one of the bigger-than-quantum, and the other of the smaller-than-continua? Isn't that a sort of "rule" that makes them co-exist?

http://www.sites.hps.cam.ac.uk/boiling/

Came across this guy today. Cool little essay on the history of boiling points, and some experiments the guy did to validate some of the old work on boiling points that had been lost.

Here's a pretty clear case of Kuhn loss, I think. Note that Kuhn-loss doesn't mean that these things are irretrievable -- only that they are lost due to the accidents of history (focusing on cutting edge research, as the author puts it here -- or, in the case of Kuhn, during scientific revolutions).

Kuhn seems to be referring to the fact that what passes for improvement in science is not a case of taking an old theory A and upgrading it to A', so and so forth; what actually happens is theory A is replaced by another brand new theory B.

This is, from my limited experiences, mirrored in romantic relationships - men/women replace rather than upgrade their partners! :lol:

Here's a pretty clear case of Kuhn loss, I think. Note that Kuhn-loss doesn't mean that these things are irretrievable -- only that they are lost due to the accidents of history (focusing on cutting edge research, as the author puts it here -- or, in the case of Kuhn, during scientific revolutions). — Moliere

Kuhn loss is exemplified by the continued use of an empirical concept, but with a changed sense. To get from the old to the new use and back again requires an act of translation.

“ Briefly put, what the participants in a communication breakdown can do is recognize each other as members of different language communities and then become translators.Taking the differences between their own intra- and inter-group discourse as itself a subject for study, they can first attempt to discover the terms and locutions that, used unproblematically within each community, are nevertheless foci of trouble for inter-group discussions. (Locutions that present no such difficulties may be homophonically translated.) Having isolated such areas of difficulty in scientific communication, they can next resort to their shared everyday vocabularies in an effort further to elucidate their troubles.

Each may, that is, try to discover what the other would see and say when presented with a stimulus to which his own verbal response would be different. If they can sufficiently refrain from explaining anomalous behavior as the consequence of mere error or madness, they may in time become very good predictors of each other’s behavior. Each will have learned to translate the other’s theory and its consequences into his own language and simultaneously to describe in his language the world to which that theory applies. That is what the historian of science regularly does (or should) when dealing with out-of-date scientific theories.”(Thomas Kuhn, Structure of Scientific Revolutions)

Doesn't boiling point count? Hasok Chang speaks of two ways of speaking about boiling points -- the "Standard Temperature and Pressure" modern sense, and the variable-empirical route from the 18/19th centuries gone over in the paper which includes marking where water begins to boil and when it's a full boil.

↪Joshs Doesn't boiling point count? Hasok Chang speaks of two ways of speaking about boiling points -- the "Standard Temperature and Pressure" modern sense, and the variable-empirical route from the 18/19th centuries gone over in the paper which includes marking where water begins to boil and when it's a full boil — Moliere

I read the paper you linked to. These two ways of speaking about boiling point don’t seem to
present us with the alternative meanings of ‘boiling point’. They are not disputing what it means for water to boil, or what a threshold ‘point’ means , or what water or temperature mean( these basic concepts are the sort that would be in question in a paradigm shift) . The only issue in question here is how many factors come into play in influencing boiling point ( atmospheric pressure , type of coating of the vessel, presence of bubbles in the water). No translation of sense is required to shift from the Standard temperature and pressure model to the variable-empirical model.
This is not a transformation of the meaning of boiling point. Instead, this is an example of an attempt to increase the accuracy and scope with which a conventionally accepted concept of boiling point is determined, and as such it represents what research in a period of normal science is about.

These two ways of speaking about boiling point don’t seem to
present us with the alternative meanings of ‘boiling point’. They are not disputing what it means for water to boil, or what a threshold ‘point’ means , or what water or temperature mean( these basic concepts are the sort that would be in question in a paradigm shift) . — Joshs

I'd say "threshold point" is the exact thing that changed meaning. In the old way there is no point, it was just a matter of convenience that steam seemed to hold constant temperature so they could get on with the business of measuring temperature after establishing some kind of way of making consistent measurements.

The notion of a point goes along with Standard Temperature and Pressure, which is really more theoretical than empirical. It's *at 100 degrees C* that water boils, with some changes due to temperature and pressure -- but no mention of the hydrophobic/phillic properties of the vessel changing the boiling point, or the effect of dissolved air on water's boiling.


I'd say that the equipment involved and the economic model of science at the time and all that goes into the context of discovery would change the meanings of the terms.


I'd say that what the scientists were doing to improve measurements of water boiling point would count as normal science, for sure -- I'm not sure where the loss actually occurred. But what they meant by "water boils at 100 degrees C" and what we mean seem different to my eyes.

Some additional thoughts:

The measurement of temperature is especially important to chemistry. I could see that maybe boiling point just doesn't seem that important -- it seems like a stray fact rather than some sort of foundational concept which has paradigm-changing possibilities. But establishing a basis of measuring temperature which can be shared made thermodynamics possible, and thermodynamics is a huge part of modern theoretical chemistry.

I'm not sure I'd say that this is a paradigm change though -- only a change in meaning of a basic concept. So maybe not a Kuhnian loss in that sense, like you're saying. But it seemed close enough -- a change in meaning resulting in a loss between generations of scientists -- to count to me.

I'd say that the equipment involved and the economic model of science at the time and all that goes into the context of discovery would change the meanings of the terms.


I'd say that what the scientists were doing to improve measurements of water boiling point would count as normal science, for sure -- I'm not sure where the loss actually occurred. But what they meant by "water boils
But what they meant by "water boils at 100 degrees C" and what we mean seem different to my eyes. — Moliere

For Kuhn a paradigmatic normal science community can function perfectly well without agreement on basic theoretic issues , such as what exactly is the causal explanation of the concept of boiling, or whether atoms
exist.
I dont think one could say a significant shift in meaning of scientific concepts has taken place until a large set of agreed upon practices , forms of measurement , interpretation of measurement results and use of apparatus have also been transformed. I think the alternative explanations for boiling that Change discusses
we’re forgotten because they mattered little to the goals and practices of scientists. I suppose in some small sense a conceptual shift is involved in understanding these alternative models, but they seem to leave intact the nature of the assumed building blocks (thermodynamic behavior of gases and solids), recombining the patterns of their interactions in novel ways.

Cool, I think we've arrived at an understanding. I understand you to be saying that it's not enough to count, but at least you see the pattern in the example that I'm drawing from. Maybe could draw a weak/strong distinction if we needed to down the road.

Gets at the question I still don't have a good answer for -- what counts as a paradigm? Even Kuhn's example of quantum physics doesn't quite seem paradigmatic in the strong sense in that it does not replace the standard model, but is kind of a science which is about physical reality but describes it different because of the phenomena it focuses upon.

What counts as meaning change within a scientific community?


I agree that the practices, forms of measurement, interpretation of measurement and use of the apparatus must be transformed -- but that's exactly what's taken place with temperature. No one uses the instruments they used in determining the boiling point of water (which is why Chang had to argue that a modern volumetric flask counted as a recreation of the experiments). We've replaced that apparatus with the theoretical "standard temperature and pressure". Temperature is usually measured with a thermocouple or digital thermometer. Chang notes that engineers still study these properties of water, but chemists do not -- the goals and practices of science have changed so much from then that, while it was not a revolution between competing factions ala Lavoisier, a lot has changed since then. (especially, it should be noted, how science is funded -- who has time for such foundational questions as the standard of boiling points or temperatures when we have to make the newest molecule to keep the lab funded, and the thermometers work good enough for our purposes?)