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Date: | Fri Mar 31 17:18:54 2006 |
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It is worth noting that among other things Thomas Kuhn
provided a conception of the advance of science in which the
individual is dependent on a wider social context for his
own rationality in a manner closely parallel to the 'Austrian'
account of the dependence of the individual on the social context
of changing price signals for his own ability to rationally
evaluate his or her own success in fitting into a wider order.
Indeed, Kuhn implicitly provides a parallel argument against the
'central planning' of science -- pointing out that operation of science
necessarily allows for personal judgments of intolerable anomaly
and of the risks and opportunity of alternative research programs, and
in fact that the process in which divergent judgment allow for the
exploration of new paradigms across 'revolutions' is absolutely required
for the advance of science. Kuhn's point is that a distribution of
different accessments of promise in science is required -- that without
this variability alternatives which allow scientists to get from one
framework to another would never be explored. By 'hedging bets' during
periods of scientific crisis, the community is allowed to 'see past'
any single conceptual framework, allowing it to explore across a varied
landscape of conceptual space. In Kuhn's picture, a distribution of
individual differences during periods of scientific crisis is essential
to the scientific process -- risky venture based on differences in
perception and judgment is required. These differences are essential, and
part of the _social rationality_ of scientific development. For, as
Kuhn suggests,, "No process essential to scientific development can be
labelled 'irrational'"
Greg Ransom
Dept. of Philosophy
UC-Riverside
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