Rereading normal science.
| Autor | Ginev, Dimitri |
RESUMEN: Este trabajo examina la relevancia de cierta clase de conceptos hermenéuticos para la lectura filosófica de la investigación científica normal. El amor se opone a la idea de que la noción de "ciencia normal" sólo se puede entender en términos socio-psicológicos, sociológicos o etnometodológicos. Trazando paralelos entre la lectura original kuhniana de la empresa de solución de enigmas y la hermenéutica filosófica de Gadamer, se delinea un contexto de "teorías de Europa continental" para interpretar la dinámica de las prácticas de investigación. La relectura de la ciencia normal da la oportunidad de desarrollar una alternativa hermenéutica a la filosofía analítica de la ciencia.
PALABRAS CLAVE: racionalidad-phronesis, experiencia práctica, estructuras anticipatorias hermenéuticas, normatividad escondida
SUMMARY: This paper considers the relevance of a class of hermeneutic concepts to the philosophical reading of normal scientific research. The author opposes the view that the notion of "normal science" can only be read in socio-psychological, sociological or ethnomethodological terms. By drawing parallels between Kuhn's original reading of puzzle-solving enterprise and Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics, a context of "Continental theories" for interpreting the dynamics of research practices is delineated. The rereading of normal science provides the opportunity for developing a hermeneutic alternative to the analytic philosophy of science.
KEY WORDS: phronesis-rationality, practical experience, hermeneutic forestructure, hidden normativity
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Many philosophers of science have engaged during the past three decades in a thoroughgoing reevaluation of the relationship between their discipline and various ideas of Continental philosophy. The present paper is devoted also to such a reevaluation. My aim is to discuss some of the tenets of a variety of "hermeneutic philosophy of science" through a rereading of Kuhn's concept of normal science. My basic assumption is that Kuhn's elaborations on normal (routine) research provide a base for comparison between his historical philosophy of science and Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics. The author of Truth and Method praises Kuhn for taking into account "a hermeneutic dimension" in his paradigmatic conception of scientific development. Furthermore, because of this dimension, he is successful in orienting philosophy of science beyond the dilemma between Kantian transcendentalism and logical empiricism.
Interestingly enough, Gadamer suggests this appraisal in a paper devoted to the question of whether the post-war intellectual climate does lead to a reduction of philosophy in toto to "theory of science" [Wissenschaftstheorie] (see Gadamer 1981, pp. 151-159). In several papers from the early 1970s he argues in favor of the negative answer. According to a main argument for this answer, it is the intrinsic development of the philosophy of science that rehabilitates practical and hermeneutic philosophizing. Kuhn's theory of science --so Gadamer's argument goes-- allows the natural sciences to be aware of their limits. The hermeneutic dimension of normal scientific research is also acknowledged by Kuhn, who in the Introduction to The Essential Tension confesses that he as a physicist had to discover for himself the importance of hermeneutics. Kuhn adds to this confession: "In my case, however, the discovery of hermeneutics did more than make history seem consequential. Its most immediate and decisive effect was instead on my view of science" (Kuhn 1977, p. XIII).
To be sure, various "hermeneutic elements" are to be discovered in the post-positivist tradition of constructing models of science's cognitive structure and dynamics. In contrast to many representatives of this tradition, however, Kuhn's kind of hermeneutics of scientific research is not to be reduced to the interpretative correlations between empirical data and theoretical frameworks (in particular, between theory and experiment). Most of the post-positivist authors are predominantly preoccupied with these correlations. In their account, because of the intimate entanglement of experimental observation with theory's structure, there is no "neutral observation language". Moreover, all scientific languages are "always already" interpreted. The linguistic construction of both scientific observation and scientific theory is impregnated with procedures of interpretation. The thesis of theory-ladenness of observation (as it is formulated and championed in the late 1950s and 1960s by Toulmin, Achinstein, Hanson, Polanyi, Hesse, and Feyerabend) contributed to replacing both empiricist and objectivist kinds of epistemology by interpretative theories of the structure and dynamics of scientific knowledge. The post-positivist authors displayed also discontent with the strongly deductive account of scientific theory that represents it as interpretations of theoretical postulates, or, as theoretical and observational concepts, and correspondence rules relating theory to observation. There is no structural part of a scientific language (regardless how rigid are its syntax and semantics) that is not a linguistic construction. Following different versions of DuhemQuine thesis, post-positivists went to entangle the theoretical holism about meaning variance of "observational language" with epistemological views of science's historicality. Yet they looked not for an interpretative theory of scientific research, but for a reformulated (historicist and holist) epistemology that can overcome the static "rational reconstruction" of science suggested by logical positivists. What distinguishes Kuhn's conception of normal science from the mainstream of post-positivism, is the search for accounts of science's research practices that is irreducible to epistemology. The paradigm of science-as-practice as opposed to the paradigm of science-as-knowledge was initiated precisely by Kuhn's elaborations on the notion of normal science.
In reaching this conclusion, however, one has to distinguish between Kuhn's "hermeneutic dimension" and other significant hermeneutic tendencies in the philosophy of science. Thus, Kuhn is not trying to reveal a complementarity between hermeneutic prudence and epistemic rationality in the development of science, which seems to be a main concern of Stephen Toulmin's recent work as a continuation of his earlier "evolutionary ecology of science". (1) Furthermore, Kuhn's interpretative conception of the routine research practices is not a hermeneutic variety of cognitive psychology. For many years, the view has gained currency that this conception is a counterpart to Polanyi's psychological hermeneutics of scientific research. Kuhn's theory of normal science has nothing to do with psychology at all. Notoriously, the accusations in psychologism stem from the debates with the critical rationalists. It was Popper's critique that attributed to "Kuhn's dogmatism" a sort of irrational psychologism. Popper believes that the psychologistic account of normal research legitimates an image of science that is a "danger to our civilization". In the mid 1970s, Alan Musgrave stressed that the only difference between Kuhn's "normal scientific puzzle-solving" and Lakatos' "work in the protective belt" is that Kuhn, "following Polanyi, uses psychological terminology, and speaks of the normal scientific community being 'committed' to its paradigm. Lakatos, on the other hand, speaks not of 'commitments' but of methodological decisions" (Musgrave 1976, p. 458).
In fact, Kuhn has never dealt with the psychological problematics of the motivation of a scientific community's members. In saying this, I should like to return to the parallel with Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics. "Commitment to a paradigm" has not so much to do with personal (or collective) motivations as with the conservatism of normal scientific mentality. The latter cannot be elucidated in terms of the "context of discovery". "Commitment to a paradigm" is Kuhn's expression for what in philosophical hermeneutics one calls internalization of (and attachments to) the "prejudices of a tradition" (or, the "pre-judgments informed by a tradition"). Both, "commitment to a paradigm" and "tradition's prejudices" are not subjective but rather trans-subjective phenomena. Both of them transcend the epistemic opposition between subjective and objective. Normal scientific "dogmatism" is informed by the resistance of scientific communities to go beyond the horizon of familiar research practices. Like Gadamer's defence of the "tradition's authority", Kuhn stresses the "paradigm's authority" by following the idea of "understanding by applying". For Gadamer, "application" mediates between interpretation and understanding, creating thereby a triunion. Understanding cultural artifacts means understanding them with respect to their application either in their own historical contexts of in the present situation. (The latter case is illustrated by the "interpretative application" of law and Scripture.) For Kuhn, the idea of "interpretative application" correlates with the question of how conceptual, experimental and mathematical tools are applied in puzzle-solving enterprise of normal scientific research. For both thinkers, "understanding by applying" grounds a kind of "hermeneutic conservatism".
Despite the essential convergence in several respects between the views of both authors, an essential difference between Kuhn's historical philosophy of science and Gadamer's universal hermeneutics cannot remain unnoticed. What I have in mind is the deep discrepancy between Kuhn's incommensurability thesis and Gadamer's conception of the "fore-structure of completion" that lays the foundations of the "dialogue that we are". For Gadamer, there are no closed "theoretical worlds" since there are no horizons of cognitive work, which are deprived of a potential fusion with other...
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