Robert J. Richards and Lorraine Daston, eds. Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions at Fifty: Reflections on a Science Classic. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016. Pp. 202. $25.00 (paper).

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Previous articleNext article FreeBook ReviewsRobert J. Richards and Lorraine Daston, eds. Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions at Fifty: Reflections on a Science Classic. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016. Pp. 202. $25.00 (paper).Christian DamböckChristian DamböckUniversity of Vienna Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreThis volume collects contributions from a 2012 conference in Chicago. The University of Chicago Press asked editors to organize the event and prepare a volume to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Kuhn’s Structure. Nine contributions are divided into five categories and cover different topics (authors are in parentheses and sections in brackets): Structure as influenced by Cold War rhetoric (George Reisch [I]); Structure as a book on psychology, not the sociology of research (M. Norton Wise [II], Peter Galison [III], David Kaiser [IV]); examples versus rules (Ian Hacking [V], Lorraine Daston [VI]); case studies from the history of science that look into some aspects of Structure (Daniel Garber [VII], Angela N. Creager [VIII]); and citation analyses (Andrew Abbott [IX]).In 1947, Kuhn read Aristotle’s writings about physics and realized that Aristotle must have been misunderstood if seen through the eyes of a modern physicist. Kuhn considered this experience to be the essence of his later theory on incommensurable paradigms. In his contribution to the present volume, Reisch [I] reconsiders Kuhn’s treatment of the “Aristotle experience” at different stages of his life. He compares the narrative of the Aristotelian experience to the Cold War rhetoric of the 1950s and argues that the idea of researchers being “captured” by incommensurable paradigms is similar to the Cold War conception of an innocent American being “brainwashed,” “captured,” or “converted” by red propaganda. Kuhn stresses the political side of paradigm change in several places, and although he never mentions brainwashing and the Cold War in this context, Reisch provides strong evidence that these phenomena were crucial to the development of Kuhn’s understanding of the political side of the history of science. Kuhn was infected to some degree by the anticommunist ideas of Harvard president James Bryant Conant and “converted” communists such as Sidney Hook and Arthur Koestler. However, Kuhn was not interested in communism and anticommunism, but in the psychological conversion of scientific and political ideas. He turned the anticommunist views of Conant, Hook, and Koestler on their heads and used them as a tool for the historiography of science.Was Kuhn’s work about psychology or about the sociology of science? The contributions of Wise [II], Galison [III], and Kaiser [IV] affirm the former. Galison and Kaiser point to a number of sources from the Kuhn Nachlass, in particular, several correspondences (Kaiser) and early notebooks (Galison). In this light, Galison starts with a reassessment of Kuhn’s education as a physicist in the 1940s: As a physicist, Kuhn never took part in large working groups, but carried out projects that could be calculated by a single person from an armchair. Kuhn’s work became more interesting when he began to study nonscience literature in 1949. As Galison emphasizes, the picture that Kuhn draws in Structure about the historical development of science was transformed from Jean Piaget’s work on the intellectual development of children. Kaiser points to the influence of Heinz Werner, another developmental psychologist, and provides a brief survey of correspondences Kuhn had with various scientists, after Structure was published. We learn that the majority of Kuhn’s correspondence partners were psychologists, who shared his ideas before philosophers, historians, or physicists took broader notice.Hacking [V] and Daston [VI] provide a correction to a misreading of Kuhn, enforced by the alleged influence of Wittgenstein’s rule-following conception of language. A paradigm in Kuhn’s sense, as Hacking illustrates by an Aristotle exegesis, is not a set of rules (or axioms), but a set of examples that teach us about how to use them. This has parallels in recent discussions on the philosophy of science (highlighted by Hacking). However, the exemplars standpoint also involves a surprising topicality of Kuhn’s in the recent history of science, here highlighted by Daston. According to Daston, the development of this field occurs in three stages: “whiggish” history, as initially criticized and overcome by Kuhn himself; science and technology studies of Edinburgh school fashion; and the history of science properly understood. The latter is devoted to case studies devoid of “structure” of a philosophical or sociological nature. Kuhn’s book, according to Daston, can be divided into two parts, with an uncovering of the hidden structure of science and an illustration of the development of science (a descriptive treatment of case studies). While the first aspect might be removed from Kuhn’s agenda, the second aspect makes him a pioneer of the recent descriptive history of science: “history of science without structure.” Daston also shares quotations and photographs from the publication of Theodor Erismann’s experiments with inverting glasses. While Kuhn used these experiments as “exemplars” for the gestalt- or paradigm shift that takes place in scientific revolutions, Daston reuses them as exemplars to illustrate the shift from science with structure toward science without structure.Two historical case studies by Garber [VII] and Creager [VIII] illustrate the new historiographical paradigm, highlighted by Daston. Garber describes the so-called Scientific Revolution of early modern times as a process of piecemeal development rather than a revolution. Creager highlights the importance of model exemplars in the field of biomedicine, with a case study of the phage group. In the last essay of this volume, Abbott [IX] analyzes some citation indices that illustrate the number of references that Kuhn’s book had received since the early 1970s. Abbott then concludes with a report on his own reading of Kuhn’s book on November 10, 2012.This volume is an important contribution to the historical reconstruction of Kuhn’s ground-breaking work, although the quality of the contributions is mixed. Reisch’s essay stands out for its argumentative consistency and the amount of material packed into a 15-page essay. The contributions of Galison and Kaiser stand out for new sources being analyzed, including the way in which they highlight developmental psychologists, such as Piaget and Werner, regarding the development of Kuhn’s account. The other contributions fall behind. Wise and Abbott do not carry enough conceptual or archival weight. Hacking’s contribution loses itself in the details of Aristotle’s exegesis, whose relevance to Kuhn is doubtful. The case studies of Garber and Creager are relevant on their own. However, it is not clear how they might create a better understanding of Kuhn’s work. Daston’s contribution is highly suggestive; but if only a destructuralized version of Structure is relevant, this might imply the overall irrelevance of philosophical reflection in both science and the history of science. Do we really want to go so far? Wise, Galison, and Kaiser point out that Kuhn’s approach is psychological versus sociological and find this to be a problem. Is the psychology of science unnecessary when its sociological side is investigated? The writers suggest this as the case but do not argue why. Those shortcomings, however, are outweighed by the historical strength of some of the contributions, including the accessibility and literary quality of the whole volume. One is eager to learn more about Kuhn’s Aristotle experience and how it relates to Cold War rhetoric; about Piaget and Werner and the role they envisioned for Kuhn; and about several notebooks, manuscripts, and correspondence from Kuhn’s estate, which are partly investigated here. Previous articleNext article DetailsFiguresReferencesCited by HOPOS Volume 7, Number 1Spring 2017 Sponsored by The International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/691139HistoryPublished online February 22, 2017 For permission to reuse, please contact [email protected]PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.