Thomas Kuhn on Paradigms

[@lurb1557]

Victor, I am so grateful for your videos! Due to extenuating family circumstances, I am having to undertake the second year of my degree as an exam-only student. This means I haven't had access to live lectures/seminars. As such, your youtube videos have truly been invaluable in assisting with my degree. Do you offer any additional courses for people? Outside of your university tuition

[@VictorGijsbers]

@@lurb1557 Thanks for your very kind comment! I don't have the time to offer courses outside of my university, except of course for these videos. :-)

[@jordanoconnor3148]

Love this series, awesome video

[@physics1518]

I'd like to see your take on Feyerabend. I think he solves a lot of the criticisms leveled against Kuhn while still achieving a critique of a universal scientific method.

[@davidbradley9519]

I'd like to see you on cable TV

[@martinbennett2228]

Yes, incommensurability claims are mostly dubious. In practice, a new outlook or shift in the paradigm is met with resistance. As the shift takes place there will be scientists who had worked with the paradigm who are particularly sceptical, but not outside the dialogue. I saw this as a student after Peter Mitchell had developed his chemiosmotic theory (also known as 'hypothesis' by the more sceptical) for how ATP is produced in mitochondria. Mitchell's revolutionary insights depended on an appreciation of chemistry within the context of biological structures, that had only recently been revealed by the development of electron microscopy. In the early 70s when I was a student there were still lecturers who were sceptical and proposed an alternative speculation that there might be a chemical intermediate involved that was yet to be found, but this did not mean that they were unable to engage and present Peter Mitchell's work. Nonetheless they were people whose outlook depended more on the chemistry involved without considering so much the biological structures involved. It is more that the paradigm creates a barrier for what turns out to be a very fruitful area of research. Peter Mitchell did encounter opposition to his work, but enterprisingly set up, with another scientist (Jennifer Moyle) a charitable research company (Glynn Research Ltd) in a remote region of Cornwall, where the theory was developed. Ultimately the scepticism improved the research, it uncovered errors which they were able to address and refine the theory. Oddly it is still current in higher school science to quote values for how much ATP can be generated from a glucose molecule that are really based on the old paradigm. The expected exam answer of 38 ATPs per glucose is actually a fiction since the point of the Mitchell theory is that the mechanism cannot assure a definite value. In reality the yield of DNA is roughly around 30 to 32 ATPs per molecule (but this answer will lose you marks in an exam!

[@VictorGijsbers]

Thanks for sharing!

[@Phishiesmels]

Pedagogical masterpiece 👌🏻