KARL POPPER VERSUS THOMAS KUHN

INTRODUCTION

Science is from the latin word scientia ,meaning “knowledge” and is a systematic enterprise

that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions

about the universe. The philosophy of science is concerned with all the assumptions,

foundations, methods, implications of science, and with the use and merit of science

Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn are two of the towering figures of twentieth – century

philosophy of science, and for a good reason. Some of their ideas even made it into main

stream culture and are among the few concepts from philosophy of science that are somewhat

known to practising scientists.

KARL POPPER’S PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE

Sir Karl Raimund Popper was an Austro-British philosopher and professor at the London

School of Economics. He is generally regarded as one of the greatest philosophers of science

of the 20th century.

Popper’s view of science has two elements: criteria for demarcation between science and

metaphysics, and a description of the nature of scientific methodology. The first element is

concerned with issues pertaining to the status of science in the broad spectrum of knowledge

especially regarding the social sciences. The second element deals with the issue of the nature

of science and how it progresses. The scientific method according to Popper is characterised

by the proposition of theories or conjectures and attempting refutations of these theories.

Popper of course gave us the idea of falsifiability as a way of distinguishing genuine

scientific theories from pseudoscience. Popper coined the term "critical rationalism" to

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describe his philosophy. Concerning the method of science, the term indicates his rejection of

classical empiricism, and the classical observationalist - inductivist account of science that

had grown out of it. Popper argued strongly against the latter, holding that scientific theories

are abstract in nature, and can be tested only indirectly, by reference to their implications. He

also held that scientific theory, and human knowledge generally, is irreducibly conjectural or

hypothetical, and is generated by the creative imagination in order to solve problems that

have arisen in specific historico-cultural settings.

Logically, no number of positive outcomes at the level of experimental testing can confirm a

scientific theory, but a single counterexample is logically decisive: it shows the theory, from

which the implication is derived, to be false. The term falsifiable does not mean something is

made false, but rather that, if it is false, it can be shown by observation or experiment.

Popper's account of the logical asymmetry between verification and falsifiability lies at the

heart of his philosophy of science. It also inspired him to take falsifiability as his criterion of

demarcation between what is, and is not, genuinely scientific: a theory should be considered

scientific if, and only if, it is falsifiable.

THOMAS KUHN’S PHYLOSOPHY OF SCIENCE

Thomas Samuel Kuhn was an American physicist, historian, and philosopher of science

whose controversial 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions was deeply influential

in both academic and popular circles, introducing the term "paradigm shift", which has since

become an English-language staple.

Kuhn made several notable claims concerning the progress of scientific knowledge: that

scientific fields undergo periodic "paradigm shifts" rather than solely progressing in a linear

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and continuous way; that these paradigm shifts open up new approaches to understanding

what scientists would never have considered valid before; and that the notion of scientific

truth, at any given moment, cannot be established solely by objective criteria but is defined

by a consensus of a scientific community. Competing paradigms are frequently

incommensurable; that is, they are competing accounts of reality which cannot be coherently

reconciled. Thus, our comprehension of science can never rely on full "objectivity"; we must

account for subjective perspectives as well.

Kuhn’s view of science appears to be diametrically opposed to that of Popper. Kuhn argued

that science does not progress via a linear accumulation of new knowledge, but undergoes

periodic revolutions, also called “paradigm shifts” in which the nature of scientific inquiry

within a particular field is abruptly transformed. Kuhn introduced the concept of paradigm

shift to indicate those rare situations in the history of science in which a field abandons a

framework in favour of another, as a result of a crisis induced by mounting number of

puzzles that cannot be resolved within the context of old framework. In general, science is

broken up into three distinct stages. Prescience, which lacks a central paradigm, comes first.

This is followed by "normal science”, when scientists attempt to enlarge the central paradigm

by "puzzle-solving". Guided by the paradigm, normal science is extremely productive: "when

the paradigm is successful, the profession will have solved problems that its members could

scarcely have imagined and would never have undertaken without commitment to the

paradigm".

During the period of normal science, the failure of a result to conform to the paradigm is seen

not as refuting the paradigm, but as the mistake of the researcher, contradicts Popper’s

falsifiability criterion. As anomalous results build up, science reaches a ‘crisis’, at which

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point a new paradigm, which subsumes the old results along with the anomalous results into

one framework, is accepted. This is termed ‘revolutionary science’

SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES IN THEIR VIEWS

Essentially Popper’s position was that the main role of a good scientist is that of a critic of

established or working hypothesis. As he put it: “It is the most characteristic feature of the

scientific method that scientists will do everything they can in order to criticize and test the

theory in question. Criticizing and testing go hand in hand; the theory is criticized from very

many different standpoints in order to bring out those points which may be vulnerable.

Kuhn’s view on the other hand was that criticism is exceptional; it’s what leads to occasional

paradigm shift and that much of science is what he called “puzzled solving,” or "normal

science.” Failure to achieve a solution discredits only the scientists and not the theory. Kuhn

may have been right, that most of the time the rules don’t get questioned, but if they were

never questioned we would have no explanation for the occurrence of paradigm shifts to

begin with, thus undermining Kuhn’s own picture of how science works. Popper and Kuhn’s

disagreement amounted to a distinction between two functions within the practice of science,

one of criticism (Popper) and one of puzzle solving (Kuhn).

There are other scientists who see a link between the views of Popper and that of Kuhn

because both views portray some aspect of progress of science. Kuhn’s view of the nature

and progress of sciences is a socio-psychological development of Popper’s view. While

Popper concentrates on hypothetico-deductive aspect of science which is basically

theoretical, Kuhn dwells on the social and psychological factors in the scientist’s activity.

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Apparently both Popper and Kuhn agree that science does not proceed by induction. However

Kuhn disagrees with the view that science progresses by conjectures and refutations.

The debate hinged on which function was more important for an individual scientist to

pursue, but both Popper and Kuhn missed the obvious solution: both functions are performed

at group level, i.e., by the ensemble of scientists working within a particular discipline. Some

scientists are more inclined to engage in criticism and others in puzzle solving. Science works

well because there is a division of labour that facilitates the continuous interaction between

the the two functions.

IMPLICATIONS OF THE VIEWS OF POPPER FOR SCIENCE EDUCATION

1. Teachers should encourage objectivity, logical reasoning and the development of

problem solving skills. In groups students can be made to propose theories and

through discussions try to falsify those of other groups to make the teaching and

learning of science interesting and fruitful.

2. Teachers should cultivate among learners the attitude that all science is tentative, and

that that effort should constantly be made to discover more powerful ideas through

critical thought and investigation.

IMPLICATIONS OF THE VIEWS OF KUHN FOR SCIENCE EDUCATION

1. Teachers should help students acquire knowledge in science through a combination of

problem solving science activities. Students should be given experiments and guided

to come up with observations and conclusions. Repeated observations and testing will

lead them into discovering things for themselves.

2. Teachers should be role models to students. Guiding them as they pursue

investigations into issues concerning science.

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REFERENCE:

Popper and Philosophy of Education. Retrieved on June 27, 2013 from

http://www.ffst.hr/ENCYCLOPAEDIA/doku.php?=popper_and_phylosophy_of_education.

Philosophy of science. Retrieved on June 27, 2013 from http://

www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/phlosophy_of_science

Thomas kuhn’s philosophy of science. Retrieved on June 27, 2013 from

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/oct 2011/kuhn_028.html.