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The Structure Thirty Years Later: Refashioning a Constructivist Metaphysical Program

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2022

Sergio Sismondo
Sergio Sismondo*
Affiliation:
Cornell University
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Extract

I argue here that for the past thirty years there has been a persistent misreading of Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Not everybody has participated in this misreading, but its persistence is remarkable. So one of my tasks is to diagnose the reasons for its continuance. It is also an important misreading, because it attributes to Kuhn a view that is from most people’s perspective highly untenable, that scientists in some strong sense construct the world by choosing a paradigm.

To avoid repeating work done by Gutting and many others (see Gutting 1980) I will focus on Kuhn’s constructivist metaphysical program, as seen by commentators.

Type
Part VIII. Kuhnian Themes: SSR at Thirty
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1992 , Issue 1: Volume One: Contributed Papers 1992 , 1992 , pp. 300 - 312
Copyright
Copyright © 1992 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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