Showing papers on "Criticism published in 1970"

Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge: The Nature of a Paradigm

Abstract: 1. The initial difficulty: Kuhn's multiple definitions of a paradigm . 2. The originality of Kuhn's sociological notion of a paradigm: the paradigm is something which can function when the theory is not there . 3. The philosophic consequence of Kuhn's insistence on the centrality of normal science: philosophically speaking, a paradigm is an artefact which can be used as a puzzle-solving device; not a metaphysical world-view . 4. A paradigm has got to be a concrete ‘picture’ used analogically; because it has got to be a ‘way of seeing’ . 5. Conclusion: preview of the logical characteristics of a paradigm . The purpose of this paper is to elucidate T. S. Kuhn's conception of a paradigm; and it is written on the assumption that T. S. Kuhn is one of the outstanding philosophers of science of our time. It is curious that, up to now, no attempt has been made to elucidate this notion of paradigm, which is central to Kuhn's whole view of science as set out in his [1962]. Perhaps this is because this book is at once scientifically perspicuous and philosophically obscure. It is being widely read, and increasingly appreciated, by actual research workers in the sciences, so that it must be (to a certain extent) scientifically perspicuous. On the other hand, it is being given widely diverse interpretations by philosophers, which gives some reason to think that it is philosophically obscure.

Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge: Reflections on my Critics

Abstract: 1. Introduction. 2. Methodology: the role of history and sociology . 3. Normal Science: its nature and functions . 4. Normal Science: its retrieval from history . 5. Irrationality and Theory-Choice . 6. Incommensurability and Paradigms . INTRODUCTION It is now four years since Professor Watkins and I exchanged mutually impenetrable views at the International Colloquium in the Philosophy of Science held at Bedford College, London. Rereading our contributions together with those that have since accreted to them, I am tempted to posit the existence of two Thomas Kuhns. Kuhn is the author of this essay and of an earlier piece in this volume. He also published in 1962 a book called The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , the one which he and Miss Master-man discuss above. Kuhn is the author of another book with the same title. It is the one here cited repeatedly by Sir Karl Popper as well as by Professors Feyerabend, Lakatos, Toulmin, and Watkins. That both books bear the same title cannot be altogether accidental, for the views they present often overlap and are, in any case, expressed in the same words. But their central concerns are, I conclude, usually very different. As reported by his critics (his original has unfortunately been unavailable to me), Kuhn seems on occasion to make points that subvert essential aspects of the position outlined by his namesake. Lacking the wit to extend this introductory fantasy, I will instead explain why I have embarked upon it.

Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge: Consolations for the Specialist

Abstract: ‘I have been hanging people for years, but I have never had all this fuss before.’ (Remark made by Edward ‘Lofty’ Milton, Rhodesia's part time executioner on the occasion of demonstrations against the death penalty.) ‘He was’—says Time Magazine (15 March 1968)—‘professionally incapable of understanding the commotion.’ Introduction . Ambiguity of presentation . Puzzle solving as a criterion of science . Function of normal science . Three difficulties of functional argument . Does normal science exist? A plea for hedonism . An alternative: the Lakatos model of scientific change . The role of reason in science . INTRODUCTION In the years 1960 and 1961 when Kuhn was a member of the philosophy department at the University of California in Berkeley I had the good fortune of being able to discuss with him various aspects of science. I have profited enormously from these discussions and I have looked at science in a new way ever since. Yet while I thought I recognized Kuhn's problems ; and while I tried to account for certain aspects of science to which he had drawn attention (the omnipresence of anomalies is one example); I was quite unable to agree with the theory of science which he himself proposed; and I was even less prepared to accept the general ideology which I thought formed the background of his thinking. This ideology, so it seemed to me, could only give comfort to the most narrowminded and the most conceited kind of specialism.

Mind-body identity, privacy, and categories

Abstract: Current controversies about the Mind—Body Identity Theory form a case-study for the investigation of the methods practised by linguistic philosophers. Recent criticisms of these methods question that philosophers can discern lines of demarcation between ‘categories’ of entities, and thereby diagnose ‘conceptual confusions’ in ‘reductionist’ philosophical theories. Such doubts arise once we see that it is very difficult, and perhaps impossible, to draw a firm line between the ‘conceptual’ and the ‘empirical’ and thus to differentiate between a statement embodying a conceptual confusion and one that expresses a surprising empirical result. The proponent of the Identity Theory (by which I mean one who thinks it sensible to assert that empirical inquiry will discover that sensations (not thoughts) are identical with certain brain-processes)1 holds that his opponents’ arguments to the effect that empirical inquiry could not identify brain processes and sensations are admirable illustrations of this difficulty. For, he argues, the classifications of linguistic expressions that are the ground of his opponents’ criticism are classifications of a language which is as it is because it is the language spoken at a given stage of empirical inquiry. But the sort of empirical results that would show brain processes and sensations to be identical would also bring about changes in our ways of speaking.

Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge: Does the Distinction between Normal and Revolutionary Science Hold Water?

Abstract: Professor T. S. Kuhn's contribution to this Symposium can be looked at from two angles: either as a critique of Sir Karl Popper's approach towards the philosophy of science, in the light of its contrasts with Professor Kuhn's own views, or alternatively, as a further instalment in the development of Kuhn's analysis of the process of scientific change. My concern here is with the second of these two aspects. I shall draw attention to certain significant changes in the position Kuhn now appears to be occupying from those which he adopted, first in his original paper on ‘The Function of Dogma in Scientific Research’ read at Worcester College, Oxford, in 1961, and subsequently in his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions published in 1962. And in the light of changes, I shall suggest how we might see our way beyond Kuhn's theory of ‘scientific revolution’ to a more adequate theory of scientific change. The great merit of Professor Kuhn's insistence on the ‘revolutionary’ character of some changes in scientific theory is that it has compelled many people to face for the first time the full profundity of the conceptual transformations which have, at times, marked the historical development of scientific ideas. Yet from the beginning it was clear to many onlookers that Kuhn's original statement of his position was, in at least two respects, only provisional. Some of us have been waiting with interest to see in what direction his own intellectual development took him next.

Freud and Psychoanalysis

Abstract: This book gives the substance of Jung's published writings on Freud and psychoanalysis between 1906 and 1916, with two later papers. The book covers the period of the enthusiastic collaboration between the two pioneers of psychology through the years when Jung's growing appreciation of religious experience and his criticism of Freud's emphasis on pathology led, with other differences, to his formal break with his mentor.

Art and Its Objects: With Six Supplementary Essays

Abstract: Preface to this edition Richard Eldridge Preface to the second edition The argument Art and its objects Supplementary essays 1. The Institutional theory of art 2. Are the criteria of identity for works of art aesthetically relevant? 3. A note on the physical object hypothesis 4. Criticism of retrieval 5. Seeing-as, seeing-in and pictorial representation 6. Art and evaluation Bibliography.

The Contingency Model: Criticism and Suggestions

Abstract: The authors present a critical analysis of Fiedler's Contingency Model of Leadership Effectiveness. These criticisms are discussed and various solutions are suggested.

The Stubborn Structure: Essays on Criticism and Society

Abstract: Part 1: Contexts 1. The Instruments of Mental Production 2. The Knowledge of Good and Evil 3. Speculation and Concern 4. Design as a Creative Principle in the Arts 5. On Value-Judgements 6. Criticism: Visible and Invisible 7. Elementary Teaching and Elemental Scholarship Part 2: Applications 8. Varieties of Literary Utopias 9. The Revelation to Eve 10. The Road to Excess 11. The Keys to the Gates 12. The Drunken Boat: The Revolutionary Element in Romanticism 13. Dickens and the Comedy of Humours 14. The Problem of Spiritual Authority in the Nineteenth Century 15. The Top of the Tower: A Study of the Imagery of Yeats 16. Conclusion to A Literary History of Canada

Novel and Romance 1700-1800 : A Documentary Record

Abstract: The documents collected in this volume, first published in 1970, trace the development of novel criticism during one of the most formative periods in the history of fiction: from 1700-1800. The material includes prefaces to collections, translations and original novels; essays written for journals modelled on the Spectator; passages taken from miscellanies and from books written primarily for some purpose unconnected with the novel; reviews from the monthly reviews; and introductions to the collected works of certain authors. This volume covers 100 years of criticism and creative writing, and the materials are arranged chronologically. Each of the documents is headed by an Introductory Note and the Editor has provided an important historical introduction.

On the Information Provided by Observations

Abstract: In his article ‘The Conception of Probability as a Logical Relation’ [1] A.J. Ayer has criticized the logical interpretation of inductive probability on which J. M. Keynes [22], Rudolf Carnap [6], and many other writers on the philosophy of induction have based their conceptions of inductive inference. Ayer’s criticism is concerned with the principle of total evidence and with the obvious fact that it is often reasonable to collect new evidence when we are studying the credibility of some hypothesis. According to Ayer, it is impossible to understand this simple fact and justify the principle of total evidence, if the concept of inductive probability is interpreted in the way suggested by Keynes, Jeffreys, Carnap, and other proponents of the logical interpretation.

The Literary Views of Gottfried von Strassburg

Abstract: LTERARY CRITICISM of any sort is unusual in medieval writing. When works are cited or discussed, it is usually to help a student to formalize his own endeavors, and the authors used for the purpose are those beyond criticism, that is, the classical writers who have long been canonized. Any mention of contemporary authors is rare and when it occurs at all it is usually inspired by either affection or rancor and does not constitute literary criticism in any real sense of the term. Style or even poetic method is never discussed. There were, of course, numerous "Arts of Poetry" in Latin and in some of the vernaculars but these are works written with the express purpose of providing rules of poetic composition. They are prescriptive, not critical. In view of this absence of even the most rudimentary literary criticism in the work of contemporaries, it is surprising to find embedded in a courtly romance an apparent digression which seems at first sight to be a review of the present state of the poetic art, complete with all the touchiness and prejudice which one associates with artists talking about their rivals' work. The passage has actually been called "Gottfried's literary criticism" and it is, of course, best known for its caustic references to a writer who is almost certainly Wolfram von Eschenbach. But does the passage in fact constitute literary criticism? Gottfried was not the kind of artist who dropped his theme to make asides, particularly asides of 456 lines. Nor, when the passage is inspected closely, is there much literary criticism in it. Very few authors are mentioned, and, as I hope to show, they are mentioned in a specific order with a very definite purpose in mind. The whole passage is an organic part of the romance, a carefully integrated discussion of the means of telling Tristan's story within the story itself.' There is no need to spend very long in discussing the reasons for the substitution of a literary excursus for a description of a formal ceremony of knighting. Gottfried says that the subject has been treated ad nauseam (although there are no such descriptions in the works of Hartmann and Wolfram), but that is not his real reason for avoiding the subject. Tristan is, for Gottfried, a literary figure or, as I have shown elsewhere, an artist.2 It would have been perfectly suitable to show his father Riwalin going through the ceremonies of investiture but to do so for Tristan would have been an offense against his nature. Here is the very point on which Gottfried and Wolfram disagreed most violently, for Parzival is the literary representation of a true knight, while Tristan is a literary figure, an artist who assumes the form of a knight because the chivalric romance was the principal literary genre of the day. If Tristan is to be made a knight, he must be made a literary knight, and it will be necessary to endow him not with the sword and spurs of the fighting man but with the qualities needed in a romance and furthermore in a romance of a very special kind. Here we must observe very closely. We are told that thirty other young men are to be knighted with Tristan, and their clothes-that is, their vestments, their new acquisitions or, allegorically, th qualities they take on when they become k ights-are these:

American Pluralism: Theory, Practice, and Ideology

Abstract: Pluralist theory has come under increasing attack of late, the counts in the indictment are numerous.1 The main thrust of the criticism, however, is well represented by the charge of conservative bias on the one hand and irrelevance on the other.2 The charge of conservatism arises largely from the tendency in pluralist theory to equate elite bargaining and negotiation with the generic concept of politics. In this view, any politics that does not take place within the highly controlled context of a legislative committee, executive bureau, and interest-group sub-system, and that is

Praise, Criticism, and Race

Abstract: The present study is concerned with the impact of integrating faculties in areas where de facto segregation existed among the pupils. The specific area of interest was the manner in which teachers used praise and criticism in the classroom and the effect on responses initiated by pupils. Earlier experimenters have investigated teachers' use of praise and criticism. Zigler and Kanges found that verbal reinforcers that connoted praise or correctness increased the amount of time spent attending to the assigned task (1). Page reported the same result when "encouraging" written comments were used with secondary-school students (2). In a study that involved producing and eliminating disruptive classroom behavior, Thomas, Becker, and Armstrong concluded: "The results demonstrated that approving teacher responses served a positive reinforcing function in maintaining appropriate classroom behaviors. Disruptive behaviors increased each time approving teacher behavior was withdrawn. When the teacher's

Inter-Theoretic Criticism and the Growth of Science

Abstract: This paper is intended to be a small contribution to a future comprehensive Theory of Scientific Growth. I take it that such a theory would give an idealized description of the repeating patterns of growth found within the history of science and show how these developmental patterns are different from those found in the case of theories such as witchcraft, on the one hand, and the patterns found in the growth of the ‘practical arts’, such as pottery-making, on the other. The theory would go on to explain why such patterns might be expected to produce scientific knowledge by pointing out the critical forces which are operating and the rationality of the responses to them. In short, an adequate philosophical theory in this area should not only give the kinetics of scientific growth, but also the dynamics of that process.

Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge: Normal Science, Scientific Revolutions and the History of Science

Abstract: I should like to comment very briefly on the Kuhn-Popper disagreement over the essential nature of science and the genesis of scientific revolutions. If I understand Sir Karl Popper correctly, science is basically and constantly potentially on the verge of revolution. A refutation, at least if it is big enough, constitutes such a revolution. Professor Kuhn argues, on the other hand, that most of the time devoted to the pursuit of science is what he calls ‘normal’ science—that is, problem solving, or working out chains of argument implicit in previous work. Thus, for Kuhn, a scientific revolution is a long time a-building and occurs only rarely because most people are not trying to refute current theories. Both sides have presented their positions in considerable detail but there seems to me to be a very important gap in both theories. It is, simply, how do we know what science is all about? The question may sound startlingly naive, but I shall now attempt to justify it. There are, essentially, two respectable scholarly ways to go about answering the question. One is sociological; the scientific community may be treated like any other community and subjected to sociological analysis. Note that this ‘may’ be done, but that it has not yet been done. To put it another way, most scientific activity may be directed toward refutation or toward ‘problem solving’, but we don't know whether it is or not.