Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-8ctnn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T18:04:18.023Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Theory-ladenness of Observations as a Test Case of Kuhn’s Approach to Scientific Inquiry

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2022

Jaakko Hintikka
Jaakko Hintikka*
Affiliation:
Boston University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The overall character of the ideas Thomas S. Kuhn has offered concerning the nature of scientific inquiry has been generally misunderstood, or, rather, misconstrued. (See Kuhn 1957,1970.) Kuhn’s ideas do not add up to a fully articulated analysis of the structure of the scientific process. Kuhn does not offer a theory of science which should be evaluated in the same way as, e.g., the hypothetico-deductive model of science or the inductivist one. What Kuhn does is best viewed as calling our attention to certain salient phenomena which a philosophical theorist of science must try to understand and to account for. We do injustice to Kuhn if we deal with his views as if they were finished products of philosophical theorizing. They are not. Rather, they are starting-points for such theorizing; they pose problems to be solved by a genuine theory of science.

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. 277 - 286
Copyright
Copyright © 1992 by the Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Earman, J. (1977), “Theory-Change as Structure Change”, in Historical and Philosophical Dimensions of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science, Butts, R.E. and Hintikka, J. (eds.). Dordrecht: D. Reidel, pp. 289-309.Google Scholar
Franklin, A. (1986), The Neglect of Experiment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Franklin, A.. (1990), Experiment, Right or Wrong. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Galison, P. (1987), How Experiments End. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Glymour, C. (1980), Theory and Evidence. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Gooding, D., (1990), Experiment and the Making of Meaning. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grant, E. (1962), “Late Medieval Thought, Copernicus and the Scientific Revolution”, Journal of the History of Ideas 23:197-220.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grant, E.(1991), “Celestial Incorruptibility in Medieval Cosmology 1200-1687”, in Physics, Cosmology and Astronomy 1300-1700, Unguru, S. , (ed.). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic, pp. 101-27.Google Scholar
Gregory, R.L. (1970), The Intelligent Eye. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.Google Scholar
Hacking, I. (1981), Scientific Revolutions. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hanson, N.R. (1958), Patterns of Discovery. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hintikka, J. (1988a), “On the Incommensurability of Theories”, Philosophy of Science 55: 25-38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hintikka, J.. (1988b), “What is the Logic of Experimental Inquiry?”, Synthese 74:173-88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hintikka, J.. (1991), ‘Toward a General Theory of Identifiability”, in Definitions and Definability, Fetzer, J.H. , Shatz, D. and Schlesinger, G. , (eds.). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic, pp. 161-83.Google Scholar
Hintikka, J.. (1992), “The Concept of Induction in the Light of the Interrogative Approach to Inquiry”, in Inference, Explanation and Other Philosophical Frustrations, Earman, John (ed.). Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press (forthcoming).Google Scholar
Hintikka, J.. and Garrison, J.W. (forthcoming), “Newtonߣs Methodology and the Interrogative Logic of Experimental Inquiry”, in Science in Context.Google Scholar
Kuhn, T.S. (1957), The Copernican Revolution. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Kuhn, T.S. (1970), The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 2nd ed., enlarged. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Rantala, V. (1977), Aspects of Definability. Helsinki: Societas Philosophica Fennica.Google Scholar
Rock, I. (1983), The Logic of Perception. Cambridge: MIT Press.Google Scholar