by oddbeaver » Sat Feb 19, 2011 3:46 pm
I can't give you a history of the argument as used by card-carrying creationists, 'cos I'm not one. But I can maybe give the gist, as Thomas Kuhn's idea of a paradigm (especially in its later sense) is actually tied to the whole idea that our current - let's call it 'mindset' for a minute - has an effect on how we view new information, and that that has an impact on the way science happens.
Kuhn originally suggested 'paradigm' largely in the sense of a simple but informative model, like the example of two balls dropped from the same height, but one rolling down a ramp and the other dropped freely (I think this one was attributed to Galieo - he played with balls a lot). IIRC, the idea of that little model is that asking which ball is travelling fastest helps one understand that 'fast' is a more complicated idea than it first sounds; both balls are travelling equally fast at the end of the fall, but one takes longer to get there. This in turn obliges us to dispense with our original idea of what 'fast' meant and replace it with a set of theories that separates the ideas of speed, velocity and acceleration. One of these comes close to what 'fast' probably means to most folk.
One of Kuhn's extra observations was that after we've done that and have our new collection of theories, 'fast' no longer means 'quick' or 'taking the shortest time', as it might before our theory shift, but perhaps more like 'highest speed'. Our new view of the world changed the meaning of the term sufficiently that we must at least be very vareful about which mindset we're talking in when we say 'fast'. A rather stronger example is what 'heat' was before phlogiston was replaced with energy; then, heat was a fluid, while now it is a manifestation of energy. (That would be a 'paradigm shift'). We can't have useful conversations with a phlogiston scientist if we try to use 'heat' concepts based on our current energy viewpoint.
Kuhn went on to say that while a particular paradigm is in force, science mostly proceeds within that paradigm. We tend to design experiments that test that paradigm, and we tend to interpret the resuts in terms of the paradigm. For example, we now interpret temperature changes in terms of energy movement and look for sources of energy, where a phlogiston adherent would have wondered where the fluid was leaking from or (as Raleigh did) try to weigh it.
Now, from personal experience as a researcher, I would say that Kuhn had a point. While I was looking at the conformational properties of fluorinated olefins during my PhD, there is not doubt that I automatically reached for the then current toolkit; energy, electronic interactions, Slater-type molecular orbital theory and so on. I saw all my observable spectral frequencies as observations of the energy differences between quantum energy levels, not as telling me the size distribution of little packets of phlogiston floating about in my NMR tubes. So all my interpretations were (and still are!) in terms of the current model. Even my instrument readouts were calibrated to give values to quantities that make sense in my current world view - watts, for example, aren't 'cubic centimetres of phlogiston per second'. And of course, being a recent PhD I was still getting to grips with current theory and trying to fit my ideas to that; there was no way I was equipped to say 'hang on a minute; this whole quantum mechanics thing is junk and should be replaced by a continuous universe mediated by tiny invisible green ants who can only carry finite amounts of phlogiston'. (Well, actually I was pretty well equipped NOT to say that, but you get my drift).
This certainly happens in most fields of science.When we have a damn' good theory and a world view that it makes sense in, we do experiments that test it, and we try to interpret them in terms of that theory. When they don't fit a theory that has held up very well to date, we don't change the theory initially, we go looking for the reasons that the answer doesn't fit.
Now, the 'paradigm argument' you refer to is that this - I think real - tendency to see things in terms of the current paradigm is evidence that we scientists (and everybdy else, actually) are blinded by our current theory/paradigm/mindset, call it what you like.
There are two things in favour of this argument (at least, two things that I can think of). First, I believe it is true. To an extent. Initially, as Kuhn said, when cracks in the theory appear, they are regarded as anomalies and not taken too seriously. Second, in current Forensic science we have learned that one should look not only at the support that the evidence gives to a finding of guilt, but also at the same evidence taken as support for the alternative hypothesis of innocence. Working scientists don't tend to weigh up competing theories routinely in that way; they don't always have a single competing theory to consider and perhaps because of that they tend to start with an assumed model and attempt to find evidence against it without considering possible alternatives (this is pretty much Popper's view of scientific hypothesis testing). So we are, I believe, both conditioned to dismiss disagreement with current theory or reinterpret in terms of exceptions, and disinclined or unable to consider how the evidence might support a competing theory.
But Kuhn had rather more to say on the point, and so do I. Kuhn observed that as exceptions accumulate, scientists start to question the current theories and eventually the current paradigm. That paradigm will fall and be replaced by another. Newtonian determinism being replaced by Einsteinian relativity quantum is a large scale example: Newtonian gravity was dented by the observations on the orbital perihelion of Mercury, atomic clocks turn out to change relative time in orbit and electrons need relativistic corrections to get the hydrogen emission spectrum exactly right. It all adds up to newtonianism not being enough and Newtonian mechanics became a special case in a larger paradigm. That is, weight of evidence will (and I would say always will) count in the long run. Scientists change their minds given contrary evidence; it's one of the defining characteristics of science. So just because most scientists are too close to the trees to see the shape of the wood by no means indicates that _all_ scientists are blinded to the possibility of other explanations.
My own extra observations:
One might observe - perhaps a tad cynically - that the leading scientists nowadays, or at least the ones who _want_ to be leading scientists - know only too well that it is the challengers of orthodoxy that get the big prizes and rthe repuitation, not the adherents. Much of western science is led by folk trying to tear it down - there is simply no way these folk are blind to alternatives, although they will, of course, be their own alternatives.
The other thing I'd say is that this paradigm idea cuts both ways, and here, for the first time, I am going to mention creationism as an example, because I can't think of a better one. Creationism is as much a paradigm as the idea of evolution by natural selection. If the paradigm argument holds in science - and I believe it does - adherents to creationist theories are as much blinded to other paradigms as adherents of Darwinian natural selection are blinded to creationism.
But I think there's a crucial difference. Science is based on the testable; we will discard a paradigm if evidence shows that it is wanting. We can and will correct a false scientific paradigm. But paradigm blindness is incurable if there is no possibility of contradictory evidence. A scientist blinded by the current paradigm can be cured. The obvious question, given that noone has yet come up with a method of refuting the hypothesis of a creator capable of adjusting the world arbitrarily to fit any observation, is whether a paradigm-blinded creationist can ever be cured.
Bottom line; there is an element of truth in the paradigm-blindness argument, but it is not the whole truth; paradigms in science can be and are changed given evidence.
And for scoring debating points: 'You too - and without any hope of correction'.