Ludwik and Kuhn Comparison

Ludwik and Kuhn Comparison

Ludwik and Kuhn Comparison

Introduction

According to Fleck, a fact is not something objectively given but rather a social event. Scientific facts are no exception, as can be seen through the annals of medicine. Fleck argues that if the physical sciences initially appear to be immune to such social conditioning, this misconception can be corrected by recognizing the similarities between the natural sciences and medicine both historically and epistemologically.

Discussion

Fleck's ideas are not new, having been presented by him in 1935, but it is only recently that they have begun to strike a responsive chord. Kuhn was aware of Fleck's work when he began to promulgate his own ideas in the 1960s. But there are important differences as well as similarities which can only be appreciated once Fleck's own work has had a proper hearing. To this end the University of Chicago Press has published a translation-edition of the full monograph in 1979. In 'On the question of the foundations of medical knowledge', Fleck's own precis to this major work, he correctly foretold the dawning of the sociology of cognition.

In science we routinely assume that whatever theory we may have about them, facts themselves are things that are—out there in the world to be observed. However, it has become rather standard for historians and philosophers to assert instead that “facts” are human constructs understandable only in a particular historical or societal context. They note that scientists typically argue over very different theories to interpret the same data. We in turn resist this deconstruction by outsiders who themselves don't have to face the struggles of understanding Nature. Nonetheless, there may have been more than idle poetry in Keats' assertion that “truth is beauty and that is all ye need to know.” Facts may be more determined by the theoretical lenses through which we view the world than we like to think.

Thomas Kuhn's famous book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions1 had a transforming effect across both the academic and popular culture landscapes. It gave us the satisfying term “paradigm shift” for the episodic bursts of change by which we so often, perhaps so vainly, characterize our own research or field. Kuhn argued that a scientific revolution occurs when a new explanation for the available data becomes accepted by the body of scientists, a socio cultural phenomenon very different from the prevailing notion of science as a fact driven process. The notion has been applied, but not without discussion, to all fields of endeavor including anthropology.

Paradigm shift (or revolutionary science) is the term used by Thomas Kuhn in his influential book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) to describe a change in the basic assumptions, or paradigms, within the ruling theory of science. It is in contrast to his idea of normal science.

According to Kuhn, "A paradigm is what members of a scientific community, and they alone, share." Unlike a normal scientist, Kuhn held, "a student in the humanities has constantly before him a number of competing and incommensurable ...