Thomas Kuhn "Normal and Revolutionary Science"

I. Introduction: A Role for History

-texts books as a guide to understanding the history of science
Kuhn compares them to tourist brochures. What is the comparison?

-the "development-by-accumulation" model of the history of science
What is it? Why does Kuhn reject it?

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-if past science if mere superstition or myth:

"then myths can be produced by the same sorts of methods and held for the same sorts of reasons that now lead to scientific knowledge. If, on the other hand, they are to be called science, then science has included bodies of belief quite incompatible with the ones we hold today."

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-the new history of science asks not about the relation of Galileo's views to those of modern science, but rather about the relationship between his views and those of his group."
Consider what Kuhn has to say about a person who takes up chemistry (ignorant of that field, but knowing "what it is to be scientific"). pg 453 left column

-"incommensurable ways of seeing the world and practicing science within it."

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What is normal science?

What are scientific revolutions, and how do they occur?

What is a paradigm?

How is the example of light supposed to illustrate the differences between rival, incommensurable paradigms?

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Why are appeals to normal science, in the context of choices between paradigms, circular?

What is a switch in visual gestalt?