[Advaita-l] Re: non-subjectivism of science

[Slowfork at aol.com]

Dear Mayuresh,

You mean Thomas Kuhn not Carl Popper don't you? Kuhn wrote "The Structure of 
Scientific Revolutions".

Kuhn's idea of how science progresses by relatively sudden and complete 
("catastrophic" if you like) change in which, for a time, conservatism plays a 
significant role in impeding the adoption of the new paradigm has provided deeper 
insight into the way science is practiced than Popper's falsifiability 
criterion ever could on its own. However don't get too carried away by Kuhn. He 
supposes that scientific revolutions are "complete" in the sense that when someone 
takes on board the new paradigm their view of their field is changed 
completely. It cannot be squared at all with the old view and that it is impossible for 
him to switch back and forth between the old and new ways of seeing things. 
As has been  pointed out by Steven Weinberg this just isn't true (at least in 
modern science). Relativity, for example, still retains much of  Newtonian 
physics (see http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/vl/notes/weinberg.html ) and Newtonian 
mechanics is the first thing a physics undergraduate is taught. A Relativist 
has no difficulty holding both points of view in head and applying each when 
appropriate.

Hari Om

Roger Floyd