Position
Kuhnian Puzzle-Solving
A field is scientific when its practitioners share a paradigm and work within it on puzzles that the paradigm itself certifies as solvable.
Classification
- Position level
- specific
- Domains
- Epistemology , Philosophy of Science
Overview
Kuhn located the mark of science in the settled periods rather than the revolutionary ones. Normal science is the patient articulation of an accepted paradigm, and it is precisely the researcher's willingness to blame themselves rather than the paradigm for a failed result that makes the work productive.
On this account the astrologer's problem was not that their predictions could not fail — they failed constantly — but that a failure gave them no puzzle to solve, and so no tradition of research to join.
Position on
Incompatible positions
- Falsificationism
Question scope: Science and Demarcation
References
- Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), ch. 3–4
- Thomas S. Kuhn, 'Logic of Discovery or Psychology of Research?' (1970), in Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge, where Kuhn argues against Popper that puzzle-solving under a paradigm, not falsifiability, marks a field as scientific