Plenty of people will look at this title, narrow their eyes, and go eh? What link can there possibly be between two eminent philosophers of science, and disruptive business and society at large? As it happens, quite a lot—perhaps.
For reference: Karl Popper, later Sir Karl Popper, was from Austria but spent most of his years in England as a professor at the London School of Economics. Some of his more famous works are The Logic of Scientific Discovery, The Poverty of Historicism, The Open Society and its Enemies, and Conjectures and Refutations.
Thomas Kuhn, or T.S. Kuhn spent most of his time as a professor at Berkeley, Princeton and MIT. His most famous work was The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (TSSR).
Popper and Kuhn- and their adherents- engaged/still engage in spirited debated on the nature and aims of science, how knowledge grows, and epistemology.
I was fortunate to be introduced to this field by Nicholas Maxwell, who taught philosophy of science when I was a student at University College London (UCL) and is now Emeritus Reader at UCL. Nick, through his teaching and our many pub discussions, gave me a lifelong passion for this topic and I shall always be very grateful for that gift. Nick is still active.
The Popper/Kuhn Debate
The debate is rooted in Kuhn’s views on the progression of science. He described something he called ‘normal science’, which was/is defined by paradigms (yes, Kuhn put that word and ‘paradigm effect’ in the vernacular).
In TSSR, Kuhn said paradigms “are universally accepted scientific achievements” which then dictate scientific research for a time. Operating under paradigms, normal science does not attempt to “call forth new sorts of phenomena or ‘major substantive novelties’—rather every attempt is made to interpret new observations and data in the light of the paradigm—to force nature into the preferred and relatively inflexible boxes that the paradigm supplies”.
He posited that ‘anomalies’ and ‘novelties’- new scientific discoveries- only occurred “against the background of the paradigm” and, with sufficient evidence, caused a crisis and then a revolution- leading to a new paradigm. He acknowledged a ‘pre-paradigm period’ when different theories compete for acceptance, and a ‘post-paradigm period’ when one theory won the day.
Ultimately though, science, and by implication, knowledge, followed a path of paradigm → anomaly→ crisis→ evaluation→ revolution→ new paradigm.
Popper was having none of this. To him, normal science and paradigms represented rigid and authoritarian systems, where scientists were forced to conform to and accept a singular truth for long periods of time.
He called instead for “bold conjecture–as opposed to ‘indubitable knowledge’, a commitment to ‘falsification’ of accepted norms, and a rejection of ‘instrumentalism’ where scientific theory only aids in coping with the world, not describing it”.
Popper described Kuhn’s normal science as “the activity of the non-revolutionary—the not-too-critical professional; of the science student who accepts the ruling dogma of the day; who does not wish to challenge it; and who accepts a new revolutionary theory only if almost everybody else is ready to accept it. The normal scientist– is a victim of indoctrination– the scientific method should consist of systematic attempted refutation–“.
Paul Feyerabend, writing in Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge, by Imre Lakatos and Alan Musgrave went even further: “Every statement that Kuhn makes about normal science remains true when we replace ‘normal science’ with ‘organized crime’ and every statement he has written about the ‘individual scientist’ applies with equal force to, say, the individual safebreaker”.
I mean–ouch! What happened to the genteel and ‘let’s have another snifter and chat’ world of philosophy?
Paradigms Or Active Rfutation?
As a science student trying to write somewhat intelligible essays, I didn’t quite know where I landed in this debate.
It seemed clear to me that we had had existential scientific paradigms of all sorts through time, of the kind that Kuhn described- Aristotelian Cosmology, Classical Physics, and others. But so many of these paradigms had already been put into crisis, causing a revolution and resulting in new paradigms- e.g. Galilean heliocentrism, Quantum Physics and Relativity and Space Time.
It seemed to me that Kuhn described that scientific progression as it was- that none of the scientists who replaced old paradigms did so to bring them down- that happened through the process Kuhn outlined. Popper seemed to describe science as he wished it to be.
Paradigm shifts- a replacement of accepted beliefs- aren’t localized to science. They occur across society, and the new paradigms are better, by far (if still not perfect by a long way) than the old ones, especially when it comes to societal change.
Think of the big social movements of the last century- the Suffragettes, the Hippies, Gandhi’s Ahimsa and Satyagraha, Apartheid, Equal Rights, Civil Rights, Racial Equality, LGBTQ, and Reproductive rights are just a few.
But it goes beyond that. Many of the most valuable companies in the world today- e.g. Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Google- deployed technology to effect huge paradigm shifts in the ways we interact, buy things, consume content, communicate, and search.
Does Disruption Require Popper?
The question I asked myself was this: with a Kuhn hat on, would Gandhi have come up with non-violent protest as a means of challenging British rule in India? Would Rosa Parks have refused to take her seat at the back of the bus? Would Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King and Gloria Steinem have launched their campaigns for social justice? Would Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, and others have ignited the protest against the Vietnam war?
Would Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs, Reed Hastings, Larry Page and Sergey Brin have formed the companies that have changed so much in our world?
I suspect not. So, it seems to me that Kuhn describes a world gone by- up to the mid 20th century perhaps, where change did happen, but along prescribed paths, and gradually- it was incremental and evolutionary.
Popper on the other hand is the enfant terrible-the one shaking his fist at the establishment and the status quo, demanding critical evaluation of ideas, and acceptance that any idea or accepted norm is always replaceable by something new. Popper wants active refutation and falsification of ideas as the norm. He is perhaps optimized for our times- where disruption of ‘the way things are’ isn’t an aspiration, it is an urgent imperative.
There are so many paradigms to challenge and replace- in society as much as science. Some of those paradigms are Global Warming, Climate Change, Fossil Fuel Energy, Racial Supremacy of all kinds (BLM but also the Dalits in India, the Uighurs in China), First World First, Women’s Rights in the Islamic world.
I very much doubt that anyone wakes up and says “I am going to embrace Kuhn or Popper for my path in life”. For a start I imagine most people haven’t even heard of them. But their theories and constructs still offer us so much and, in truth, we need both- a world full of Kuhnians and Popperians would either be always a little staid or always very intense, respectively.
That said, I don’t think any of the changes we desire will happen through a gradual Kuhnian progression. Well, it might.
But those agents of change who want paradigms to shift at a quicker pace will need to channel their inner Popper.
Writer: Deepak Kamlani
Image: Arie Wubben, Unsplash
