Monday, April 26, 2010

• A traditional look at the development of IR theory – paradigmatic revolution, paradigmatic coexistence, or just a succession of debates ?

• Set text: article on Thomas Kuhn in: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

• http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/thomas-kuhn/

What is a Theory ? More Explanations… from last week

• Theory is "the net which we throw out in order to catch the world – to rationalize, explain, and dominate it."

Karl Popper. Logik der Forschung, 1935: p.26 (The Logic of Scientific Discovery, London: Routledge Classics

2002, 2003, 2004)

• A good theory should fulfil the following functions: describe, explain and predict (Burchill) observable events – positive

idea of theorizing verify and/or more strictly falsify (Popper) statements about the

relationships between observable events - by confronting accumulated knowledge with reality

• “No matter how many instances of white swans we may have observed, this does not justify the conclusion that all swans are white”. Karl Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery, op. cit.

be internally consistent and coherent be parsimonious and elegant

Why an explicit theory or framework ?

• Within contemporary philosophy of science, there is a widely accepted consensus that facts are always theory-dependent.

• Thomas Kuhn, inter alia, has pointed out the difficulties that are present without any kind of a conceptual framework, paradigm or theory: "In the absence of a paradigm or some candidate for paradigm, all of the facts that could possibly pertain to the development of a given science are likely to seem equally relevant."

Why an explicit theory or framework ? II

• As Paul Feyerabend puts it: "The attempt to create knowledge needs guidance, it cannot start from nothing. More specifically, it needs a theory, a point of view that allows the researcher to separate the relevant from the irrelevant, and that tells him in what areas research will be most profitable."

• Theories seem therefore to be inevitable already in the first stage of inquiry, where we have not even started to interpret the "facts", but are only thinking about which kind of fact-gathering is relevant, and which fact and data, or what units and levels of analysis, are worth of studying.

How does science develop & grow ?

• The idea that science is a collective enterprise of researchers in successive generations is characteristic of the Modern Age).

• Classical empiricists (Francis Bacon) and rationalists (René Descartes) of the seventeenth century urged that the use of proper methods of inquiry guarantees the discovery and justification of new truths. This cumulative view of scientific progress was an important ingredient in the optimism of the eighteenth century Enlightenment, and it was incorporated in the 1830s in Auguste Comte's program of positivism: by accumulating empirically certified truths science also promotes progress in society.

• Other influential trends in the nineteenth century: - the Romantic vision of organic growth in culture, - Hegel's dynamic account of historical change, - the theory of evolution. • They all inspired epistemological views which regarded human

knowledge in terms of a continuous learning process. Science does grow simply by accumulating new established truths upon old ones. Or: we stand on the shoulders of giants…

Popular, heroic view of scientific progress

• According to such view, science develops by the addition of new truths to the stock of old truths, or the increasing approximation of theories to the truth, and in the odd case, the correction of past errors. Such progress might accelerate in the hands of a particularly great scientist, but progress itself is guaranteed by the scientific method.

• This standard, traditional view dovetails with the dominant, positivist-influenced philosophy of science.

Positivist theory creation and testing

hypotheses

theory appears consistent with

the facts

predictionslogical

deduction

empirical observation

theory correct

theory disgarded, new theory

needed

theory amendedtheory appears

inconsistent with the facts

either

or

or

either

Sir Karl Popper (1902-1994)and the logic of scientific discovery

In his Logic of Scientific Discovery (1935) Karl Popper developed a model of scientific growth & development which is based on the assumption of a continuous improvement of our knowledge by empirical research.

We start with hypotheses logically derived or deduced from theories; the corroboration of these hypotheses by empirical observation leads

-- either to the further improvement of the initial theories

-- or (negatively) to a limitation of their scope and applicability

-- or even to their being discarded.

Thus, scientific, i.e.empirical, research leads to a continuous optimization of our knowledge.

Cumulative concept of science

However, there is one major caveat…

• Karl Popper, Conjectures and Refutations (1963)1) It is easy to obtain confirmations, or verifications, for nearly every

theory — if we look for confirmations. …4) A theory which is not refutable by any conceivable event is non-

scientific. Irrefutability is not a virtue of a theory (as people often think) but a vice.

5) Every genuine test of a theory is an attempt to falsify it, or to refute it. Testability is falsifiability; but there are degrees of testability: some theories are more testable, more exposed to refutation, than others; they take, as it were, greater risks.

6) Confirming evidence should not count except when it is the result of a genuine test of the theory; and this means that it can be presented as a serious but unsuccessful attempt to falsify the theory. (I now speak in such cases of "corroborating evidence.")

…One can sum up all this by saying that the criterion of the

scientific status of a theory is its falsifiability, or refutability, or testability.

Or, a theory enjoys only a conditional validity – until the first case of evidence which falsifies it.

Popper’s falsificationist method

theory 1

theory 2

steps towards the unreachable theoretical truth

theory 3

process of error-eliminination,

falsification and theory comparison

not yet falsified, that is, accepted for the time being

Thomas Kuhn‘s model of the development of science(s)

• In his Structure of Scientific RevolutionsStructure of Scientific Revolutions Thomas Kuhn Thomas Kuhn published, in 1962, a model of the development of (the) published, in 1962, a model of the development of (the) science(s) which is based on the following assumptions:science(s) which is based on the following assumptions:

1. There is, in normal development periods of each and every science, a consensus on exemplary instances of scientific research – a concept of good science, so to speak, or a code of best practices – Kuhn calls these a paradigm. Normal science proceeds on the basis of perceived similarity to such exemplars.

2. Under certain circumstances the dominant paradigm can be superseded by a new one, which after some time unites the practitioners of a particular science again under a new code of best scientific practices.

3. Contrary to Karl Popper, scientific growth pace Kuhn is not cumulative, but rather resembles a series of quantum leaps: scientists experience a sort of Gestalt switch when they change from one paradigm to another.

Revolutionary concept of science

Gestalt switch: example

Scientific Revolution

• A scientific revolution occurs, when scientists encounter anomalies which cannot be explained by the universally accepted paradigm within which scientific progress has so far been made. The paradigm is not simply the current theory, but the entire worldview in which it exists, and all of the implications which come with it.

Scientific Revolution II

• When enough significant anomalies have accrued against a current paradigm, the scientific discipline is thrown into a state of crisis, according to Kuhn. During this crisis, new ideas, perhaps ones previously discarded, are tried. Eventually a new paradigm is formed, which gains its own new followers, and an intellectual "battle" takes place between the followers of the new paradigm and the hold-outs of the old paradigm.

Scientific Revolution III

• After a given discipline has changed from one paradigm to another, this is called, in Kuhn's terminology, a scientific revolution or a paradigm shift. It is often this final conclusion, the result of the long process, that is meant when the term paradigm shift is used colloquially: simply the (often radical) change of worldview, without reference to the specificities of Kuhn's historical argument.

PREPARADIGMATIC PHASE

BIRTH OF A NEW PARADIGM – ALWAYS BETTER THAN THE OLD ONE

„NORMAL SCENCE“

MULTIPLICATION OF ANOMALIES

CRISIS OF NORMAL SCIENCE

SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION

Kuhn – Scientific Revolutions

Quelle: Lauth/Sareiter: Wissenschaftliche Erkenntnis, Paderborn 2002, S. 123

Paradigm shift

• Kuhn said, using a quote from Max Planck: "a new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."

THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION

THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION

CREATION OF A NEW WORLDVIEW

Questioning of old knowledge & assumptions

Gradual replacement of religious & superstition presumptions

Gradual rise of science & reason

THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION

NEW DIRECTIONS IN ASTRONOMY & PHYSICS

PTOLEMY: Geocentricism

NICOLAUS COPERNICUS (1473-1543): Heliocentrisim

TYCHO BRAHE (1546-1601): More accurate position of planets

JOHANNES KEPLER, (1571-1630): Elliptical planetary movement

THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION

NEW DIRECTIONS IN ASTRONOMY & PHYSICS

GALILEO GALILEI (1564-1642)

Constructed first telescope

Described motion of bodies on earth

THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION

NEW DIRECTIONS IN ASTRONOMY & PHYSICS

ISAAC NEWTON (1642-1727)

Universal Gravitation: combined laws of planetary & earth motion

Numerous practical applications

THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION

DISCOVERIES IN OTHER SCIENCES

Botany: new medical applications

Anatomy: better understand of how human body worked

Microscope invented

THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION

PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT

FRANCIS BACON (1561-1626)

Inductive reasoning: working from particular to general conclusions

Empiricism & scientific method

THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION

PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT

RENÉ DESCARTES (1596-1650)

Geometry: any algebraic formula could be plotted as curve in space

Cartesian Dualism: division of reality into “thinking substance” & “extended substance”

Deductive Reasoning: starting with general assumptions & working downward

THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION

POLITICAL THOUGHT

THOMAS HOBBES (1588-1679)

Negative, mechanistic view of human nature

Strong sovereign necessary to control conflicting desires

Hobbe’s Leviathan

THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION

POLITICAL THOUGHT

JOHN LOCKE (1632-1704)

TABULA RASA: humans born with blank slate

Government & public enter contract

However, again there is a caveat…

• …paradigms, according to Kuhn, are incommen-surable…

• Assumption I: when a scientific paradigm is replaced by a new one, albeit through a complex social process, the new one is always better, not just different.

• Assumption II: the language and theories of different paradigms cannot be translated into one another or rationally evaluated against one another —they are incommensurable

Kuhn’s incommensurable paradigms

accepted paradigm = normal science

anomalies

extraordinary investigationsand science

new normal science

pre-paradigmperiod

incommensurable = different standards, problems etc.

Coexistence of Theories, no Revolution

Ever since Thomas S.Kuhn, in his The Structure of Scientific

Revolutions, formulated the assumption that scientific theories and/or paradigms which no longer properly do the job they were designed for will be replaced by an Ersatz theory, Social Scientists tried to apply Kuhn‘s topos of the scientific revolution also to I.R. theory development – particularly so to explain theory development and theory change in I.R. as an inner-scientific process.

Against this, it is my contention that I.R. is not characterised by theroretical revolutions, but rather by theoretical coexistence: theories once formulated in order to explain and help resolve extrascientific crises in society or politics may be relegated to science‘s theoretical toolbox once they are no longer helpful in a particular situation – but: they are not discarded, they are not replaced by an Ersatz theory, but they remain part and parcel of the armoury science keeps ready for problem-solving – and this in the end explains why there are so many I.R. theories about.