Reknamorken wrote:
] You recently lent me a book called The Structure of
] Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Khun. I have not read
] the entire book, but I will tell you one thing that is very
] interesting. Thomas observed that when the shifts occurred
] they had to do with someone completely contradicting what had
] gone before. It created a "paradigm shift."
]

This is way off topic, but if you are interested in Kuhn's book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, you may also be interested in reading Science as Social Knowledge by Helen E. Longino. There is a great debate going on about whether or not contextual values shape scientific research. Longino is a philosopher of science, and she has written this book in response to that debate, and has come up with the interesting persepective that, yes, contextual values do affect scientific research, but that without it, science wouldn't progress. In the book, she is a critic of Kuhn's philosophy about paradigms. Kuhn was one of the scholars who introduced theory-ladenness, basically that two scientists can take the same evidence and apply it to different theories because they have different perspectives of the evidence. Longino says that the consequence of theory ladenness is that two or more opposing theories accounting for the same phenomeena can't be compared with each other and against "the facts" in any way that enables us to determine which is false, and which, if any, is true. There is no neutral data that can serve as arbiter between theories because all evidence is given context by the theory it supports. Therefore, she makes the analogy that under Kuhn's view of science, people accept or reject theories not because of rational deliberation about evidential support, but more like people acquire and lose religious faith. To change ones paradigm involves changing one's world view.

Anyway....you may want to check out this book if you get the chance...I am reading it for my psych/philosophy class "Science Versus Pseudoscience" and I am really enjoying it. It is a very thought provoking book, and I think you may enjoy it.

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