Khun

• Post-popperian philosophy of science: the very basis of philosophy of science has changed with three fundamentals pillers: focus on the context of justification rather than the context of discovery, a sheered experiential reality which is the common ground for comparing competing theories, and science can progress or regress.
• Neopositivists believe that science progresses when there is more and more evidence, while popper believes in commutation of corroborated theory.
• According to post-popperian philosophy of science, there is not a shared experiential reality, each theory frames the world in different ways, and theories cannot be reciprocally compared because every theory frames the world in different ways.
• Post-popperian philosophy of science argues that there is no progress or regress possible as theories are incommensurable.
• Post-popperian philosophy of science focuses on the context of discovery, rather than the context of justification, and favors historical, psychological, and sociological factors over logical-methodological factors.
• Incommensurability is when two theories are said to be commensurable if the claims of the one can be framed in the language of the other, and when two theories are incommensurable there may be no neutral standpoint from which to make an objective assessment of the merits of the one versus those of the other.
• Thomas Kuhn was a historian of science by training, and believed that philosophers had much to learn from studying the history of science.
• Kuhn argued that insufficient attention to the history of science had led the logical empiricists to form an inaccurate and naive picture of the scientific enterprise.
• Kuhn defined a paradigm as universally recognized scientific achievements that for a time provide model problems and solutions to a community of practitioners.
• A conceptual schema connected to an implicit understanding of every perceptual experience is a paradigm.
• A conceptual schema connected to an implicit understanding of every perceptual experience means something less than metaphysical background and more than theoretical.
• A conceptual schema connected to an implicit understanding of every perceptual experience is difficult to identify as a component of a paradigm.
• Examples of paradigms include Ptolemaic and Copernican astronomy, Newtonian dynamics.
• Normal science, according to Kuhn, is the activity in which most scientists inevitably spend most all their time, is predicated on the assumption that the scientific community knows what the world is like.
• Normal science often suppresses fundamental novelties because they are necessarily subversive of its basic commitments.
• The man who embraces a new paradigm must have faith that the new one will succeed with the many large problems that confront it, knowing only that the older paradigm has failed with a few.
• The accepted paradigm is the ground for research, rather than the object of research.
• Individual scientists embrace a new paradigm for all sort of reasons and usually for several at once.
• A decision that kind can only be made on faith.
• Scientific activities are aimed at solving "puzzles", that are, problems emerging from the paradigm.
• If anomalies increase in numbers a paradigm shift may occur, a new paradigm is adopted, which can solve such anomalies so we enter in a phase of extraordinary science (not normal anymore) that leads to a scientific revolution which leads to a new paradigm.
• Everything changes form a paradigm to an other, each paradigm has its own facts, there’s not a neutral shred experiential ground so when a paradigm changes also the observational language will change and different facts will emerge.
• At this stage, science is highly cumulative: "Normal science does not aim at novelties (novità) of fact or theory and, when successful, finds none".
• Competing paradigms cannot be compared, that is, they are incommensurable: there is not any neutral experiential ground on the basis of which we can evaluate the experiential ground to choose the best one.
• The old paradigm couldn’t solve all the anomalies emerged, but the adopting of a new paradigm is based on the faith that it will be able to solve those anomalies.
• The adoption of a new paradigm occurs like a gestalt switch: it means something like turn on/off the light -> we can’t see the faces and the vase (rabbit/duck) at the same time.
• Science develops because of extra scientific factors like autobiography, personality ecc also nationality (being a researcher in a country rather than an other is very different).
• A failure in solving a puzzle is attributed to the single researcher, rather than to the inadequacy of the paradigm.
• In extraordinary science scientists put into question the pillars of a parading, in normal science those pillars are taken for granted.
• Kuhn is more interested in the context of discovery in fact the factors leading to the adoption of a new paradigm ("conversion") are not logical or empirical, but psychological, historical, sociological in character (even chance has a role!).
• The transition between competing paradigms cannot be made a step at a time, forced by logic and neutral experience.
• The adoption of a new parodical does not entail logical reason.
• The transfer of allegiance from paradigm to paradigm is a conversion experience that cannot be forced.