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The Road since Structure: Philosophical Essays, 1970-1993, with an Autobiographical Interview | 
 enlarge | Author: Thomas S. Kuhn
Creators: James Conant, John Haugeland
Publisher: University Of Chicago Press
Category: Book
List Price: $20.00
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Rating:  6 reviews
Sales Rank: 58363
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 336
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.4
Dimensions (in): 9 x 6.1 x 0.9
ISBN: 0226457990
Dewey Decimal Number: 500
EAN: 9780226457994
ASIN: 0226457990
Publication Date: November 1, 2002
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Amazon.com Review
It is possible that no book written in the last 50 years has had an influence as profound and far-reaching as Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Kuhn's argument that scientific knowledge does not develop cumulatively, but rather proceeds by a series of "paradigm shifts," captivated not only philosophers of science, but scholars in a wide range of academic disciplines. The Road Since Structure is a follow-up to his landmark work and a look at Kuhn's theory since the book's original publication in 1962. In keeping with Kuhn's wishes (he died in 1996), editors James Conant and John Haugeland organized The Road Since Structure to include 11 philosophical essays written since 1970. In the first part of the book, Kuhn spells out his theory as it developed in the 1980s and 1990s; in the second part, he replies to a number of criticisms and misreadings. The third section is a fascinating interview with Kuhn conducted less than a year before he died. For general interest readers, the lengthy interview--in which Kuhn candidly and engagingly discusses the trials and tribulations of his life and philosophical career--will probably be the most interesting part of the book. For those attuned to Kuhn's controversial work, The Road Since Structure is an indispensable aid for understanding his theory as it developed and for appreciating the full force of his replies to a host of critical objections. As always, Kuhn's clarity and fluid prose render accessible a field fraught with opaque writing. --Eric de Place
Product Description
Thomas Kuhn will undoubtedly be remembered primarily for The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, a book that introduced one of the most influential conceptions of scientific progress to emerge during the twentieth century. The Road since Structure, assembled with Kuhn's input before his death in 1996, follows the development of his thought through the later years of his life. Collected here are several essays extending and rethinking the perspectives of Structure as well as an extensive and revealing autobiographical interview.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 1 more reviews...
 Incommensurability December 11, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Aristotle's physics (ch. 1). Aristotelian physics is about qualities: temperature, position, colour, etc. Matter is a mere substrate, a sponge imbibed with qualities. This proves the nonexistence of vacuum: in a vacuum there is no matter, no sponge, to absorb the quality of place; thus there can be no place which is vacuous. Motion means change in quality. Locomotion is the special case where the quality in question is that of place, but there are also there are also other motions, such as that from sickness to health, or that from acorn to oak. These natural motions have a natural end point: a rock wants to rest at the centre of the world, a man wants to grow healthy. This is the state they reach when left to themselves. Violent motion (lifting a rock or poisoning a man) is required to perturb this state.
Analogy of "evolutionary epistemology" (ch. 4). The faith of rival organisms (=rival theories) is determined by the relative fitness of each, not by comparing them with an ideal organism (=absolute truth). One cannot assess the evolutionary benefit (=truth) of a particular trait (=proposition) without knowing to which organism (=theory) it belongs. Organisms, like theories, need not fit a static, immutable world; rather their world is largely defined through their own actions. Scientific theories fly south in the winter, as it were. Progress is often possible only by narrowing the niche, i.e., through speciation (=specialisation).
Linguistic incommensurability (ch. 2). Interpretation does not equal translation. One can learn a second language (or a rival scientific theory) as one learned the first, by immersion. But that does not imply the ability to perfectly translate between them (or effect an objective comparison). Attempts at reference-preserving translation will always be flawed whenever there is a mismatch of taxonomies, both because a single concept in one language (or theory) typically maps to several concepts in the other or fails to map at all, and because the hierarchy of classes and subclasses in the taxonomy of a language is necessarily projected onto the world when the world is described in this language.
Relationship between history of science and philosophy of science (ch. 5). Kuhn says of the historical trend in philosophy of science that "one can reach many of the central conclusions we drew with scarcely a glance at the historical record itself" (p. 111). What is needed is not actual history, but the realisation that theories are judged only comparatively. A number of well-known implications follow (difficulties for truth and realism, possibility of incommensurability, etc.) which are usually attributed to a historical approach. On the other hand: "I don't think that the [philosophers] who were doing history ... saw everything in it that I was seeing in it. They were not coming back and asking 'What does this do to the notion of truth, what does it do to the notion of progress,' or if they did, they were finding it too easy to find answers that seemed to me superficial." (pp. 311-312).
 Kuhn's missing link January 11, 2006
2 out of 6 found this review helpful
This posthumously published book is a collection of Kuhn's papers published between 1970 and 1993 together with a transcript of an autobiographical interview given by Kuhn in 1995, a year before his death. The book also contains a complete bibliography of his works.
Most of the important contributing philosophers of science in the twentieth century formed their views by reflection on the great scientific revolutions in modern physics, notably relativity theory and quantum theory. But in the first paper in this book, "What are Scientific Revolutions?" (1987), Kuhn reports that his most formative intellectual experience was his attempt in 1947 to understand the physics of Aristotle - what in his autobiography he calls his "Aristotle experience."
What distinguishes the contrast between the physics of Aristotle and Newton is the vast gulf in time, which makes their contrast quite radical in comparison to the contrast between, say, Einstein's theory and Newton's immediately preceding theory. Also the ascendancy of Newton's theory was not due to a decisive empirical test, like the eclipse experiment that decided for Einstein's theory over Newton's. It is this radical contrast between Aristotle's and Newton's physics that occasioned Kuhn's comparably radical thesis of scientific revolutions, that they are nonempirical conversions from one "paradigm" to another incommensurably different one.
When Kuhn set forth his thesis of scientific revolutions in 1962 in his famous book titled The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, the book was not welcomed by philosophers of science, who expected and demanded a coherent philosophy of language and a linguistic analysis for the Kuhnian thesis. The papers in Road Since Structure are in large part the fossil record of Kuhn's successive and unsuccessful attempts to evolve his missing link between history of science and philosophy of science. The papers show his groping, eclectic, and somewhat naive efforts at philosophy of language by a scholar who was firstly a historian of science.
Readers interested on my further comments on Kuhn are invited to read my book titled History of Twentieth-Century Philosophy of Science or Google my web site philsci for free downloads of my book by chapter - and also to read my other book reviews in this Amazon web site.
Thomas J. Hickey
Good Collection September 30, 2003
0 out of 5 found this review helpful
Unless you're a research scientist or have found yourself wrapped up in the miniscule debates over Kuhn's writings ( eg. "What exactly IS a paradigm, perfesser?"), this book is delightful! Of particular interest are the two essays "What Are Scientific Revolutions?" and "The Trouble With The Historical Philosophy of Science." Some of this can be found in "The Essential Tension" as he was always repeating himself to different audiences.
Did Kuhn ever recover from 'Structure'? February 8, 2003
22 out of 36 found this review helpful
As with (to a lesser extent) Feyerabend, Kuhn wrote his contreversial opus in the mid 60's. I think it's safe to say that anything hinting at anti-authoritarianism, as it seemed to do on the surface, was begging to be misunderstood. Honestly, after 'paradigm shift' became a bastardized slogan for everything from class-struggle to new-age revelations through meditation, I'm not sure Thomas Kuhn ever recovered from this world-wide misunderstanding. What I read in "The Road Since Structure" corroborates that as we find an author that constantly needs to clarify, "This is what I'm saying. This is what I'm not saying. Now that we're clear, let me repeat myself!" First, as anyone who's read "Structure of Scientific Revolutions" knows, Kuhn has no talent for clear writing. Nothing's changed since. These essays, although more concise and to the point (perhaps that's Kuhn having learned his lesson) are still difficult reads. The first section, I think, is the book's 'payoff'. It is here that he reiterates, clarifies and expands on what is and is not scientific revolution, incommensurability and paradigm. Two essays in particular, "What are Scientific Revolutions?" and "The Road Since Structure" are worth the price of the book alone. The second section consists of replies to Kuhns many and in an ideological sense, far ranging critics. Most of these papers were written for symposia and are difficult in the sense of listening to only one end of a phone dialogue. As he is generally responding to papers of others, without access to those papers, it is akward reading to say the least. Still, for those of us scientific philosophy nuts, the essays "Reflections on My Critics" (part of a symposium featuring Lakatos, Popper and Feyerabend amongst others) and "The Natural and the Human Sciences" are excellent illucidations of Kuhns thought. Honestly, the interview, I didn't like. Much of it is Thomas Kuhns history and as for the reviewer below that bemoans a self-absorbed Kuhn talking about himself and his "intellectual project", I'm not sure what else you should expect from an interview of a philosopher. Interviewers like to ask about the interviewee and philosopher's like to talk about what they work on. Honestly though, if you are at all familiar with Kuhns life, this interview offers little that you didn't already know.
An interesting look at a self-absorbed life July 26, 2001
14 out of 47 found this review helpful
Having just finished Steve Fuller's decimation of Kuhn's significance, I come away much less impressed with this book. I immediately noticed that Fuller's claim that Kuhn was beholden to Harvard President James Bryant Conant seems to continue after the grave, since the editor of this set of papers and interviews is none other than Conant's grandson! But putting that aside (sheer coincidence perhaps?), the final interview shows just how self-absorbed Kuhn was. Considering what was going on in the larger world around him, he seemed forever preoccupied by a very private intellectual project that never attracted the attention that buzzwords like "paradigm" did. Fuller read this interview in the original obscure Greek philosophy journal where it appeared, and makes some sharp observations about Kuhn's tendency to deny all influences -- including highly publicized ones like Ludwik Fleck. This is not to say that Kuhn's intellectual project wasn't interesting, but it's amazing just how unwilling he remained to deal with the way his work was used. Lucky for him, he was professionally ensconced in the Ivy League and so never really had to bother much with what the sub-Ivy intellectuals thought.
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