Normal Science Essay PDF

## Normal Science In this essay, "normal science" means research that is based on one or more scientific achievements from the past. These achievements, accepted for a period as the foundation for further work by a specific scientific community. Such achievements are often described in scientific...

## Normal Science In this essay, "normal science" means research that is based on one or more scientific achievements from the past. These achievements, accepted for a period as the foundation for further work by a specific scientific community. Such achievements are often described in scientific textbooks. Before such books became popular in the 19th century, many famous classics of science had a similar function. The physics of Aristotle, the Almagest of Ptolemy, Newton's Principia and Opticks - these and many other works served indirectly for some time to determine accepted problems and methods of a research area for subsequent generations of experts. They were able to do so because they had two essential features in common. Their achievements were new and innovative enough to attract a stable group of adherents who had previously practiced their science in a different way, and at the same time, it was open enough to present the new group of scientists with all possible unsolved problems. Achievements with these two characteristics will be referred to from now on as "paradigms." ## Work of Scientists The work of scientists during periods of "normal science" Kuhn describes as "puzzle solving." Within the framework of the prevailing paradigm, there is a multitude of problems to be solved within the given framework. We have already seen that one of the things that a scientific community acquires with a paradigm is a criterion for the selection of problems, from which, as long as the paradigm is not questioned, we can assume that they have a solution. ## Scientific Problems To a great extent, these are the only problems that the community recognizes as scientific or that they encourage their members to tackle. Problems like [...] are rejected as metaphysical, considered as belonging to another discipline, or sometimes considered too problematic to waste time on . The normal science can, however, enter into a crisis where more and more [...] "anomalies" emerge, phenomena that cannot be explained by means of the prevailing paradigm. Under certain circumstances, it can then lead to a scientific revolution, a paradigm shift. ## When a Paradigm is Invalidated If a scientific theory once achieves the status of a paradigm, it will only be declared invalid if there is another candidate that can take its place. No process yet revealed by the historical study of scientific development resembles the methodological template of falsification by direct comparison with nature. This remark does not mean that scientists do not reject scientific theories or that experience and experiment are not essential for the process by which they do so. It means [...] that the act of judgment that leads scientists to reject a previously accepted theory is never based solely on a comparison of that theory with nature. The decision to reject a paradigm is always also the decision to accept another one, and the judgment that leads to this decision entails the comparison of both paradigms with nature and with each other. ## Scientific Understanding As we have seen, Karl Popper, with his principle that individual observations cannot prove but can refute general theories, draws on the description of how successful science proceeds. His reflections have shaped the understanding of many natural scientists. It was therefore a provocation to the philosophy of science when the American historian of science, Thomas S. Kuhn (1922-1996) in his 1962 study “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions,” claimed that the development of the natural sciences had unfolded quite differently. Kuhn distinguishes between two phases in his study of scientific development, the "normal science" and the "scientific revolution." During periods of "normal science," the scientists’ working practices follow established paradigms. ### Examples Of Paradigm Shifts 1. Give two "classic" examples of paradigm shifts and explain them. 2. Using the example of the transition from the Ptolemaic to the Copernican worldview, explain the difference between the theories of Popper and Kuhn. To what extent do Kuhn's "anomalous" experiences differ from Popper's "falsifying" experiences?