Abstract
I will present a comparative analysis between Thomas Kuhn's The Copernican Revolution (CR) published in 1957 and The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (SSR) published in 1962, ir order to identify divergences in the views contained in each work. I shall set forth a comparative analysis of the historiographical assumptions employed by Kuhn in each of his books. I will explore some proposals which have pointed out several discontinuities between both books, as I introduce some tools to widen this interpretative trend. I will argue that although Kuhn’s work in 1957 contains some concerns and problems which anticipate his later stances, these anticipations coexist with historiographical formulations and premises which are incompatible with the core of SSR. Therefore, I will assert that Kuhn adopts different historiographical frameworks in CR and in SSR. Finally, I will conclude that these differences are expressions of Kuhn's adoption of a more externalist view in the former, and a more internalist frame in the latter.
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Notes
Strictly speaking, 'paradigm' (p. 222) and 'incommensurable' (p. 47) appear once, but Kuhn uses the terms colloquially, without the theoretical content they have in SSR.
Director of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, where Kuhn spent a year between 1958 and 1959.
Kuhn to Tyler, July 31, 1959. Archives, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford, California, quoted in Hufbauer (2012: 451).
Westman points out that CR does not offer an account of why some astronomers converted to Copernicanism and others did not, so that ‘Kuhn produces no conversion stories for any of these figures. Instead, he circumnavigates the difficulty by falling back on a more general, less controversial, claim: Copernicus's work changed ‘the field’; it helped to open up new problems and cast doubt on the Ptolemaic alternative, even if it failed to win over most technically proficient conservative astronomers.’ (1994: 95).
In CR Kuhn claims: ‘many of those who took the observations seriously did make the full translation. These new converts may also have been impelled by another consideration: the Copernicans… had anticipated the sort of universe that the telescope was disclosing.’ (1957: 224).
‘The combination of science and intellectual history is, however, essential in approaching the plural structure of the Copernican Revolution… Astronomers were trained in other sciences as well, and they were committed to various philosophical and religious systems. Many of their non-astronomical beliefs were fundamental first in postponing and then in shaping the Copernican Revolution. These non-astronomical beliefs compose my ‘intellectual history’ component…’ (1957: viii).
‘An extended treatment would also discuss the social pressure for calendar reform, a pressure that made the puzzle of precession particularly urgent. In addition, a fuller account would consider medieval criticism of Aristotle, the rise of Renaissance Neoplatonism, and other significant historical elements besides. But technical breakdown would still remain the core of the crisis.’ (1962: 69). Also in CR, ‘The resulting demand for calendar reform provided one important motive for the reform of astronomy itself, and the reform that gave the Western world its modern calendar followed the publication of De Revolutionibus by only thirty-nine years.’ (1957: 11).
‘When 60 years after his (Copernicus) death the telescope suddenly displayed mountains on the moon, the phases of Venus, and an immense number of previously unsuspected stars, those observations brought the new theory a great many converts, particularly among non-astronomers.’ (1962: 154–155).
About the first process, Kuhn claims ‘By the early sixteenth century an increasing number of Europe’s best astronomers were recognizing that the astronomical paradigm was failing in application to its own traditional problems. That recognition was prerequisite to Copernicus’ rejection of the Ptolemaic paradigm and his search for a new one.’ (1962: 67). Regarding the second: ‘The quantitative superiority of Kepler’s Rudolphine tables to all those computed from the Ptolemaic theory was a major factor in the conversion of astronomers to Copernicanism.’ (1962: 153).
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Paul Hoyningen-Huene, K. Brad Wray, Juan V. Mayoral, Agustín Courtoisie and Hernán Miguel for the fruitful discussions given during the preparation of this paper, James Lumsden for careful reading of several versions of the manuscript, and two anonymous reviewers from Foundations of Science whose comments and criticisms contributed to substantially improve the final version.
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Melogno, P. From Externalism to Internalism: The Historiographical Development of Thomas Kuhn. Found Sci 27, 371–385 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10699-021-09801-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10699-021-09801-5