Kuhn (Part 1) Revolution, Crabs and Realism: Is There Progress Across the History of Science?

On The Very Idea - A Philosophy Podcast

In this first episode of a 4 part installment, I would like to look at scientific realism- the idea that science delivers truths about how the world actually ’is’ in reality. Under this view, science isn’t successful solely because it allows us to better cope with the world and our environment but because it’s theories are based on actual objective facts about reality. Scientific realism represents the standard non-philosophical understanding of science and it has quite a hold on our imagination. But to understand scientific realism, I want to look at the work of the man who has made the most famous argument against this account of science, Thomas Kuhn. I will explore Kuhn’s description of the vast distance between scientific revolutions as well as his incommensurability argument where he says science does not give a direct representation of reality and scientific progress cannot be measured across the scientific revolutions throughout our history.