Errol Morris, Kuhn & the Ashtray
Errol Morris published the fourth installment of his five-part personal essay on Kuhn in today’s NY Times. All of it is worth reading (except perhaps part III, which drags on somewhat), and I definitely encourage everyone to take a look!
What is Morris’ beef with Kuhn? In a nutshell, he thinks that Kuhn provided volatile ammunition for “postmodernists” (that’s Morris’ term): people who want to deny there is a truth (rather than many truths), a real world (rather than multiple realities), and a compelling distinction between ethical and unethical actions (rather than just social mores). Now, I suspect that Morris is mostly tilting at windmills here, or, at the very least, that his argument is about ten years behind the times. But for historians of science, I think, it is worth thinking about what’s got him so upset.
Morris’ central objection centers on the relationship between paradigms and incommensurability. What is a paradigm and what does it mean for two paradigms to be incomm…
What is Morris’ beef with Kuhn? In a nutshell, he thinks that Kuhn provided volatile ammunition for “postmodernists” (that’s Morris’ term): people who want to deny there is a truth (rather than many truths), a real world (rather than multiple realities), and a compelling distinction between ethical and unethical actions (rather than just social mores). Now, I suspect that Morris is mostly tilting at windmills here, or, at the very least, that his argument is about ten years behind the times. But for historians of science, I think, it is worth thinking about what’s got him so upset.
Morris’ central objection centers on the relationship between paradigms and incommensurability. What is a paradigm and what does it mean for two paradigms to be incomm…