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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