Kuhn's Challenge of the Logical Positivism Viewpoint

In Kuhn's book, he argues that there are three phases to the scientific discipline. The first is immature science. It does not yet have a paradigm, consisting of many competing schools who all hold a small bit of truth and are trying to prove why their theory has more merit than the others. Once the paradigm is adopted however, the discipline can move into normal science. Much of the experiments and work done is correcting measurements, trying to uphold the current paradigm, and seeking out new experiments and data that must exist according to the paradigm. Kuhn then explains the third phase, scientific revolution. This is when the previous paradigm is overturned and replaced by a new paradigm. He explains that revolutionary science is vastly different than normal science. Normal science is about forcing nature to fit scientific theories, instead of the other way around. Normal science is also engrossed in collecting new data, experiments, theories, and puzzle pieces that will support a certain theory. He explains that revolutions are brought about as a crisis in the science field. The revolutions are total and completely replace a previous paradigm. They are usually sudden and unpredictable, brought on by a puzzle piece that just doesn't fit the rest of the pieces. He explains that complexity is a requisite for change in his quote, “Given a particular discrepancy, astronomers were invariably able to eliminate it by making some particular adjustment in Ptolemy’s system of compounded circles. But... astronomy’s complexity was increasing far more rapidly than its accuracy and that a discrepancy corrected in one place was likely to show up in another." (Kuhn, 68). When a piece of evidence that keeps popping up as a challenge to an accepted theory appears, the spark into a scientific revolution can develop. Logical positivists argue that observation is the key to assessing the truth of facts and theories, throwing metaphysics and subjective arguments into the abyss of meaningless. Kuhn would argue against this point of view however, bring up the fact that humans aren't unbiased. They aren't simply data collection machines. They are influenced by their experiences, feelings, prejudices, and social atmospheres. An experiment that he brings up to defend his position is Bruner and Postman's experiment with playing cards. The fact that people say they see the 4 of spades or the 4 of hearts, instead of the black 4 of hearts, shows that humans will see what they expect to see. So saying that the true way to approach science is with a neutral, unbiased observation based procedure is almost impossible for humans to achieve, due to the fact that they are always going to be biased. With the argument that humans are biased, he expands his position to say that if a group of scientists were to see the same event, they would all have a different interpretation of what had happened due to their backgrounds and prejudices. Therefore, it is impossible to approach science without being subjective. The logical positivists' position is fundamentally flawed. Kuhn also brings in the Leyden jar as an example of how the logical positivists' position is flawed. One of the first paradigms concerning electricity believed that electricity was a liquid. Therefore, they would have kept their logical approach to the Leyden jar and never have taken the liquid out, believing in the fact that the liquid was essential to conducting electricity. Without someone trying out a new idea, and taking a then illogical approach of taking the liquid out, people would still have stuck with the fact that electricity was a liquid. Without someone throwing away that initial observation, a new piece of the puzzle never would have been discovered, and new observations, data, theories, and experiments would never have been found. It opened up a new pathway and started a shift in the current paradigm, because that abnormal puzzle piece didn't fit any of the others, forcing a paradigm shift to spawn.