Suchergebnisse

Le Dr Joseph Kühn qui s'est fait, comme l'on sait, l'apòtre du perfectionnement du service d'alimentation dans les hôpitaux de réserve de la Croix-Rouge et ailleurs, vient de faire paraître sur ce sujet deux nouvelles brochures, l'une sur l'adjudication du service d'alimentation d'un hôpital et le transport des mets au moyen d'ustensiles spéciaux, et l'autre sur la prise en régie de ce service par les hôpitaux de réserve de la Croix-Rouge autrichienne.

O caráter polissêmico do termo "paradigma" tornou-se uma das questões mais obscuras dentro da imagem da ciência de Thomas Kuhn. Em A estrutura das revoluções científicas (1962) foi possível identificar pelo menos 21 sentidos diferentes para o vocábulo. Trata-se de questão intrigante, ao se constatar a centralidade do termo na estruturação de uma imagem cíclica e episódica para ciência. À vista disso, este trabalho apresenta uma investigação sobre as diferentes concepções do termo em alguns momentos da obra kuhniana. A primeira parte explicita como ocorre a expansão semântica do vocábulo entre dois ensaios, A tensão essencial: tradição e Inovação na Investigação científica (1959) e A função do dogma na pesquisa científica (1963). Na segunda parte discorre-se sobre o uso do termo especificamente em A estrutura das revoluções científicas, considerando duas críticas endereçadas a Kuhn, a saber, A natureza do paradigma (1970), de Margareth Masterman, e o ensaio homônimo A estrutura das revoluções científicas (1964), de Dudley Shapere. Por fim, a terceira parte apresenta as respostas de Kuhn a tais críticas a partir da análise de "Posfácio" e das Reconsiderações acerca dos paradigmas, ambos de 1969.

Bilingualism was Kuhn's solution to the problem of relativism, the problem raised by his own theory of incommensurability. InThe Structure of Scientific Revolutions, he argued that scientific theories are separated by gulfs of mutual incomprehension. There is no neutral ground from which to judge one theory fitter than another. Each is formulated in its own language and cannot be translated into the idiom of another. Yet, like many Americans, Kuhn never had the experience of moving comfortably between languages. "I've never been any good really at foreign languages," he admitted in an interview soon before his death. "I can read French, I can read German, if I'm dropped into one of those countries I can stammer along for a while, but my command of foreign languages is not good, and never has been, which makes it somewhat ironic that much of my thought these days goes to language." Kuhn may have been confessing to more than a personal weakness. His linguistic ineptitude seems to be a clue to his overweening emphasis on the difficulty of "transworld travel." Multilingualism remained for him an abstraction. In this respect, I will argue, Kuhn engendered a peculiarly American turn in the history of science. Kuhn's argument for the dependence of science on the norms of particular communities has been central to the development of studies of scienceinandasculture since the 1980s. Recent work on the mutual construction of science and nationalism, for instance, is undeniably in Kuhn's debt. Nonetheless, the Kuhnian revolution cut off other avenues of research. In this essay, I draw on the counterexample of the physician–historian Ludwik Fleck, as well as on critiques by Steve Fuller and Ted Porter, to suggest one way to situate Kuhn within the broader history of the history of science. To echo Kuhn's own visual metaphors, one of the profound effects ofThe Structure of Scientific Revolutionson the field of history of science was to render certain modes of knowledge production virtually invisible.

In some of his writings, Kuhn criticized Putnam's causal theory of reference for natural kind terms put forward in his classic paper "The Meaning of 'Meaning'" claiming that Putnam's theory cannot explain the reference changes of natural kind terms. After looking into Kuhn's objections to Putnam's reference theory, some of the main features of Kuhn's incommensurability thesis and some traits of Putnam's later version of his theory, we will argue, on the one hand, that Putnam's later reference theory contains some components that enhance the explanation of the reference change of natural kind terms, and on the other hand, that Kuhn's and Putnam's views on reference do no differ that much, especially in virtue ofcertain similarities between Kuhn's incommensurability thesis and Putnam's thesis of conceptual relativity.

Ludz macht die Vieldeutigkeit der Kuhnschen Paradigma-Konzeption und die daraus resultierende beliebige Verwendbarkeit für das erstaunlich hohe Interesse verantwortlich, das ausgerechnet die Sozialwissenschaften ihr entgegengebracht haben. Nach einer Darstellung der Kuhnschen Lehre und deren konstruktiver Modifizierung (Austin, Mulkay u.a.) legt er einige ihrer theoriegeschichtlichen Quellen bloß, die Kuhn nicht oder nur summarisch nennt (J.B.Conant; Gesprächskreis 'Unity of Science' der Universität von Cambridge/Mass.) und analysiert abschließend den ideologischen Gehalt der Kuhnschen Hauptbegriffe. Dabei stützt er sich im Wesentlichen auf Topitschs Ideologiekritik bzw. das Konzept der Leerformel. (AR)