Chapter 31 - The Wages of the Seven Sins

 Chapter 31

 

“…the wages of sin is death”

Romans 6:23

It is no idle matter to have written a book that was to become the most referenced philosophic work of the 20th Century, and it would be a naive notion to imagine the impact of such a book is not a matter worthy of exploration. The contention here, though, is that virtually the entire philosophic content of the book is trivial, or exaggeration, or misleading, or patronising, or selective, or otherwise a misrepresentation to some degree of the realities of science and scientists. It is a further contention that such misrepresentations have had *consequences*: firstly in academia, and then to the rest of our interdependent society. As consequences propound and reiterate, it behooves us to reverse malign trends for a better way forward.

As it happens, the malign consequences of the global embrace of SSR can be classified by the seven “sins” already outlined. Each “sin” has had its own perverse effect.

 

Sin I Effects

Since the “Sushruta Samhita” was written in India in 1550 BCE as the foundational medical and surgical text of Ayurveda, textbooks of science have been written from the most noble of intent and with the most noble of effort. This was entirely necessary, for books were scarce, hand-scribed, highly expensive, and each represented an oasis of rationalism (to a varying degree) each in a desert of ignorance and superstition (and by the way, the Sushruta Samhita is surprisingly good, especially as regards surgery).

That textbook *writers* did not claim omniscience has been already discussed. That they acknowledged their best efforts would inevitably be proven wrong or inaccurate to some degree was always the case - manifestly proven by the publishing of each subsequent revised *edition* (for a perfect text would never require revising, would it?). 

As previously discussed, Kuhn’s material observations in SSR about textbooks are trivial, but what is new in his treatise is his *attitude* of wholesale slander against an entire genre of publishing.

Kuhn accused textbook writers en masse of deceiving their readers, their students … and all of us who depend on the readers and students of science textbooks for the scientific work such students eventually perform for us.

As seismic an accusation as were Luther’s 95 Theses in 1517.

Interestingly the *effect* of Kuhn’s slander on the production of *science textbooks themselves* appears to have been negligible. Actual science students esteem their books as they always have done: under the “principle of charity” they rationally assume textbooks are written in good faith, but as scientists they appreciate all scientific statements carry some degree of contingency.

But Kuhn’s anti-science-textbook accusations have founded part of a broader mistrust of the intent of scientists … a suspicion that textbooks have been written nefariously.

Primed by reading Michel Foucault to think all human activity related to the achievement and perpetuation of power relationships, Kuhn’s readership soon saw in SSR the notion that scientists were self-interested conspirators, committed consciously or unconsciously to perpetuating their favoured paradigms - and what came of such thinking?

Today it passes as a reasonable approach to criticise a scientific argument or a scientifically established position *without understanding that argument, or position, at all* if one can simply *imagine*, with or without foundation, an ulterior motive or conflict of interest behind the argument or its proponent. One need merely retort “They say that just to keep making money” or “They say that just because that’s their job” or “They say that because they are paid by Big Business” and such objections *actually pass as argument* … in part, because an assumption of propriety on the part of scientists looks naive, and that is in good measure a legacy of Kuhn’s planting doubt and mistrust in the minds of the readers of SSR.

Sin II Effects

The arguments were trite, but Kuhn nonetheless presented them in labouring the point that scientists are human - something surely no one had seriously doubted. But in labouring and labouring this point what legacy has Kuhn left us?

As was the result of Sin I, Sin II left the world less impressed with the results of *science* and more interested in the frailties of *scientists*. Again, this is not relevant to those who can read and understand the science itself, but *is* relevant to those who *can’t* read or understand science, or who have never bothered to try, because those who are science-illiterate (to whatever degree) must decide to trust or not trust scientists in lieu of being able to actually check the arguments and evidence for themselves. And recall here C P Snow’s assessment in “The Two Cultures” (1958) of the average degree of scientific literacy among the average humanities academic. Woeful. So we suddenly have the situation where our writers, our authors, our journalists, our public servants, our (non-science) teachers, and of course our Humanities academics are each and all inclined rather to question the provenance of a scientific proposal than assume the scientist involved is “on the level”.

Imagine how our world would be today if most non-scientists actually still did trust scientists.

And it gets worse.

SSR was written over 60 years ago. Two or three generations have been born under its influence (direct or indirect).

And humans, being human, often think like this: if the *other guy*, as a scientist, is massaging his work to produce a certain outcome, then don’t we need to do the same? To advance *our* side of the issue? For malfeasance breeds more malfeasance, until some scientists convince themselves “well, if you can’t beat them, join them” (especially if such scientists see themselves as fighting the Left, or fighting the Right, or saving the planet, or battling the woke, etc).

Mal-intended or not, Kuhn’s extended dwelling on the human frailties of scientists (especially written as a PhD physicist) served only to open the door to non-scientists mistrusting the intention of scientists, and to later scientists mistrusting each other, and we are all the poorer for this.

Sin III Effects

Once again, it was somewhat trite of Kuhn to devote such a slab of SSR to making the superficially ordinary point that discovery/inventions are often serpentine, convoluted processes. To the thinking person familiar with science, or to the actual scientist, the response as “well? What else could they be?”.

But Kuhn manifestly does *not* write for scientists, and this “sin” suggests, to the science-naive reader, that scientific discovery/invention is of an arbitrary nature: that, having to-ed and fro-ed its way to one particular outcome, could just as easily to-ed and fro-ed its way to a *different* outcome. Which in turn brings into question the validity of the discovery/invention as a representation of truth.

Perhaps it was at attempt at disarming honesty for Kuhn to so belabour the vagaries of scientific discovery/invention, but by exposing this one part of the scientific process … the performative part, if you will … to a readership unfamiliar with the scientific thinking motivating and indeed orchestrating the process … the science part … Kuhn creates an incomplete and misdirecting image in the mind of the science-naive reader.

Consider, for example, an appendicectomy, and imagine watching an appendicectomy being performed *without* understanding the anatomy, *without* understanding the need to remove an appendix when it is infected, and *without* even looking into the operative field. The process would appear unfathomable. A strange choreography of metal instruments, a heathen ritual of perhaps mystical significance, complete with costume and apparent human sacrifice. Yet this is what it is to study *what scientists do* without understanding *what they are doing*. 

Alternative examples come to mind. Imagine watching a portraitist at work. Look, dab, look, dab, raise thumb - while *not* being able to look at the painting nor the subject. The activity would look daft. Or watch an orchestra on television, with the sound turned off. All making no sense.

To be fair, Kuhn explains enough of the science in SSR in order that non-scientific readers can have a *rough* idea of what was going on but, consider, had he not done so the text would have read as farce. So there’s enough explanation there to prevent farce, but not enough to give solid appreciation of the logic of what was occurring. Not enough to impart to us a sense of the *achievement* of the discoveries/inventions.

Ask - having read Kuhn’s account of scientific discovery/invention, are we left with a greater, or lesser, appreciation of these achievements? Are we impelled to seek out and applaud more of such achievements? Do we *trust* the substance of the outcomes? Or are we left musing “yeah - anyone could have done that”?

Sin IV Effects

More than as a physicist, more than as a historian, and more than as a philosopher, Kuhn had another talent that came to the fore in the writing of SSR: a talent for *journalism*.

More than any other, Kuhn had a talent for generating catchy phrases, and he had a talent for seeing old concepts in a new way. Not necessarily a better way, not necessarily a truer way, but in an attention-grabbing way … like a journalist (consider - James Conant did not ask Kuhn to teach History of Science because Kuhn was good at *physics* - it was because Kuhn had a knack for *journalism*).

As we have seen, Kuhn could take the mundane and trivial & make it seem like a great discovery. Textbooks don’t tell you everything about everything. Scientists are human. Scientific discoveries don’t happen in a day. Kuhn took these entirely trivial and obvious ideas & turned them into half his book.

Sin IV was the reverse. Kuhn takes the great scientific research centres of the world - and puts them in a kindergarten.

On the way, he coins a catchy term guaranteed to perpetuate this travesty into universities and cafes everywhere: “puzzle-solving”.

Consequence?

This implicit infantilisation of the work of science researchers has enthralled the non-science world … even as science has improved every aspect of their non-scientific lives. 

Prior to SSR, the general idea of the dastardly or eccentric scientist toiling away in a dark room “puzzle-solving” was a staple of literature and film, certainly, from Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” (1818) through to Disney’s “The Absent Minded Professor” (1961). The trope was not without basis: scientists from Faraday to Feynman had indeed loved nutting out puzzles, with Feynman in particular having a special affinity for safe-cracking.

Even so, it was Kuhn who declared (and, as he was a PhD Physicist, who would contradict him?) that the work of the *vast majority* of scientists (not involved at that moment in Gestalt-inspired paradigm shifting) spent the *vast majority* of their time … “puzzle-solving”.

We need not dwell again on the implicit offence, but what have been the consequences, for all of us, resulting from this offence having been committed?

It has been, again, the trivialisation of scientific work in the minds of the broader non-scientific community.

On the one hand, if all scientific work is just “puzzle-solving” then if scientists work long enough and hard enough they should be able, eventually, to solve anything. When solutions arise they are taken and accepted as a matter of course, and when solutions *don’t* come scientists are liable to be blamed for having not “solved the puzzle” fast enough.

The development of a COVID vaccine is a case in point. There was never any question that a vaccine *would* be developed … for developing one was merely a “puzzle”. The question, then, was never “Can scientists create a vaccine? Let’s hope they can and celebrate *if* they do!” but was rather “*When* will a vaccine appear? Let’s get upset if a vaccine doesn’t arrive by our artificial deadline!”. In other words, rather than being seen as the truth pioneers they are, exploring the edges of our known realities, scientists are likened to functionaries.

And again, the connotations of childish puzzle-solving takes the scientist further away from any claim to be pursuing Truth or any claim to being the authors of novel thoughts that model observable reality, and by extension we are left with the *humanities* academics *really* in charge of the weighty concerns of Truth.

( I don’t recall, btw, scientists ever inventing some pithy phrase to describe the pen-twiddling and syllogism-tennis of the Humanities academics. After all, they don’t solve *anything* … not even a puzzle).  

Sin V Effects

The Legacy of Validated Incommensurability.

Most scientists are grown ups. They can handle insults and, if their work is disparaged it doesn’t really matter so long as positive results emerge. Humans are an ungrateful lot, and it is the lot of the scientist to be largely unthanked by the self-centric public. So what else is new?

And as regards Sin V - what does it really matter if Kuhn’s dichotomous model of big idea v little idea is poor? It was over 60 years ago … what hard has come?

Well, the *major* misstep that has a *profound* impact on academic discourse and public discourse involves the word “incommensurability”.

Recall that prior to SSR academics and the people alike were turning to *science* and scientists for the modelling of truth exploration and the rational, objective, dispassionate resolution of disagreements as to the nature and detail of such truth explorations. Basically: experiments would succeed or fail, results would be recorded, outcomes communicated, and from that point new experiments formulated. Cumulative progress contingent upon discipline, integrity and humility on the part of each individual involved. Such was the model of science, and such was the attitude and behaviour expected of anyone aspiring to conduct themselves *like a scientist*.

Now, as discussed in Sin II, it naturally occurs that not all scientists always behave according to the ideal model. Scientists are human. That much is conceded.

But Kuhn presents *incommensurability* as a *feature* of the process.

Kuhn presents inter-paradigmatic *incommensurability* as an inevitable feature of the growth (in whatever direction) of science and, along with his rhetoric concerning epistemic relativism, Kuhn thus validates as not merely commonplace but indeed inevitably *acceptable* that different schools of science may adhere to radically different “paradigms” or models of a particular reality without the totality of scientists being even *capable* of resolving their difference to the point of deciding upon the superior paradigm.

Dwell on this. Two groups of scientists. As Kuhn wrote, they occupy different worlds, speak different (science) languages. As Kuhn describes it, the two groups *cannot* cross-communicate, *cannot* work out their differences, *cannot* find a way forward together, even though they are *all* trained scientists, intelligent scientists, committed to the dispassionate and objective pursuit of empirically-demonstrable truths.

Kuhn calls it “incommensurability” … and gives up.

No solution. No way forward.

And *this* is the behaviour of scientists, *upon whom we might model our behaviour*?

What happens in a world where it is thought that massive disagreement between two groups each committed to a different “paradigm* ends with “incommensurability”, and a whimper?

What happens when explanation fails, evidence presentation fails, debate fails?

Let me tell you.

Academics might sulk in the coffee-room and write emails to the Dean

Real people resolve their differences *by other means*

All of them *bad*.

 

“Football” v “Soccer”

There is a game played the world over involving the kicking of a round ball. A key feature of the game is that the ball must not be picked up or carried by hands. And in the English language its name *is not universally agreed upon*.

The respective paradigms of the two groups embracing the two candidate names are *incommensurate*.

In brief, the word “football” is imprecise, because there are a range of games played among Anglophones that each claim the word “football”. For this reason each of these attracts an adjective. For the sake of precision, of nominative exactitude. Each, that is, instead of adherents of this word for *this* game, who insist on no adjective.

In brief, the word “soccer” is etymologically derived from the formal title Association Football. It is precise. No one fails to understand the meaning of the word “soccer”. But supporters of the alternative think the word “soccer” is demeaning. They never adequately explain why. 

Deciding the matter here is not the point. Rather, each position is held by a web of grabbed assertions, snippets of history, aesthetic preferences, value hierarchies … and the point is that this simple matter *is not unanimously decided”, and apparently that is ok.

Transsubstantiation: real or metaphoric?

In England in the 1550s it was possible to be burnt at the stake, by the law of the land, for failing to acknowledge that when a priest puts a bit of bread in your mouth during Mass that the bread *actually and physically and literally* turns into the body of Jesus.

Henry VIII had broken from the Roman Catholic Church in 1534, making himself head of the new Church of England, and in doing so he adopted into his Church a number of Lutheran positions - including that the ostensible transformation of bread into the body Jesus during Mass was *metaphoric*, not literal. Long story short, Henry died, his son Edward (Edward VI) died, then his daughter Mary ascended the throne, and *she* thought the bread *literally* turned into the body of Jesus during Mass. She *further* thought anyone who did not agree with her was a traitor to England and to God, and should be burnt at the stake (her informal appellation became “Bloody Mary”, hence the drink).

Point being: Both points of view had excellent theological arguments behind them, but they were mutually *incommensurable*, and failures of commensurability such as this sparked of the European Religious Wars of the 16th and 17th century that saw *millions of deaths*.

Differences that cannot be resolved by debate are *incommensurate*.

If such differences must be resolved, they are then done so by *lawfare* or *warfare*: both horrible.

Therefore, intelligent lovers of truth, and that includes scientists, rightly *abhore* incommensurability and rightly *debate*.

Warfare

In the later Dark Ages and early Middle Ages in the Germanic part of Europe two parties with respectively incommensurate views of a legal matter could resolve their dispute via a Trial By Combat. Perhaps it was a dispute over who owned what land. Perhaps it was over a contractual disagreement, or an accusation of fraud or embezzlement. Whatever the matter, the situation pertained that one party had a certain view of the matter, and the other had an *incommensurate* view. And because debate had failed, one party killed the other. No more dispute!

Seen in this way, every example of *warfare* is one where two (or more) parties hold incommensurate views about some matter of national or international importance. It is unusual for a belligerent leader to simply declare to his people (nearly always “his”) “hey everybody, who’s in the mood to do something completely wrong & start a war with our innocent neighbour?”. Rather the belligerent leader presents an *argument* justifying the attack on various grounds. Needless to say, the world-view or “paradigm” under which argument appears plausible is hotly disputed by the other, defending nation, which has its own paradigmatic world view that does not support being attacked by the belligerent. 

“Mein Kampf” is an example of a paradigm, well argued (but, obviously, fatally flawed) that succeeded in convincing the German nation of the appropriateness of starting WWII. It presented a fairly complete world view: of German history, what it meant to be German, how Germany had been wronged and how Germany would go about righting that wrong. Meanwhile, the rest of Europe (leaving Italy out of the example for the moment) was living in accordance with a very different paradigm. And what followed after six bloody years of “trial by combat” was a resolution of the incommensurability, and ironically, today, German people enjoy far greater freedom of movement, space, prosperity, and neighbourly goodwill than they could ever have achieved under the Mein Kampf paradigm. It’s a pity the European Economic Community wasn’t established in 1937 rather than 1957.

The US Civil War (1861-1865) was preceded by much debate between two collections of US States with ultimately irreconcilable or incommensurate views about not only slavery but also the rights of individual States relative to the rights of the Federal Government.  The fission points were debated exhaustively and furiously in Washington over the ten years prior to hostilities, without resolution being found, essentially because the Old South cradled a world view the Union North could not agree with, and the Union North refused to allow the Confederate South to set up their own country. Debate failed, and about 700,000 young men then lost their lives. The Union got their way regarding slavery and keeping the USA all together (A very good outcome!).

Of course, the use of the word “paradigm” being used here is not strictly the same as used by Kuhn. Kuhn was referring to an all-encompassing world view from a scientific perspective, and here we are discussing an all-encompassing world view from … any other perspective. That said, the point here is that whether we are talking about inter-paradigmatic incommensurability in science or inter-paradigmatic incommensurability in geo-politics, the result is the same: insofar as the dispute must be resolved, for whatever reason and with whatever urgency, the resolution by definition will be non-reasonable, and we here assert resolution-by-war to be, by definition, non-reasonable (ok if you like war I guess).

Lawfare

Between reason and warfare we find *lawfare* 

The OED defines “lawfare” like this:

 Legal action undertaken in order to exert power or control, esp. as part of a hostile campaign against a particular country or group.

Lawfare typically involves the use of legal systems to damage an opponent's reputation, challenge the legality of their actions, or impose bureaucracy in a deliberately obstructive manner.

Lawfare pollutes and bedevils academic discourse today.

Taking the example from academia, lawfare also pollutes and bedevils political discourse, and public discourse.

And here’s a suggestion: incommensurability between paradigms in science represents *failure*, not normality.

Failure to articulate and failure to listen.

Failure to think, failure to analyse.

Failure to gather evidence and data.

Failure to patiently await the gathering of data.

Failure to apply strict Aristotelian logic.

Failure to recognise the tricks of rhetoric.

Failure to persist under the understanding that, however complex, however multifaceted, there is but *one truth*

Above all, failure to truly *communicate*.

And here’s another suggestion

Kuhn himself identified the humanities as being, on the whole, *pre-paradigmatic* as sciences, each with multiple theories and schools and no objective or quase-objective mechanism by which a dominating paradigm might emerge.

Consequently, the only perspective of academic integrity to take when working in a pre-paradigmatic field is to *keep debating*. Keep talking, keep listening, keep researching.

It is a *travesty* of academia to resort to *lawfare* in order to advance or resolve an academic position.

Yet Kuhn’s blase description of, and implicit acceptance of, inter-paradigmatic incommensurability has had the perverse effect of letting academics of opinion *off the hook* of working through their ideas with their opponents, and has perversely accommodated the lawfare, the cancellations, the de-platformings, the censorship and the other infantile de-cerebrate power plays we see in public discourse today.

When Thomas Kuhn himself *threw an ashtray* at his physics student Errol Morris in 1971 (read “The Ashtray” by Errol Morris) it was as a result of a *failure of communication* between himself and his grad student.

Every time an academic or anyone else resorts to *lawfare* to silence an opponent they are confessing to a failure to communicate, confessing to a failure to pursue truth in collaboration with their presumed opponent.

Kuhn has given them the excuse of inter-paradigmatic incommensurability.

That, and the *other* great excuse he furnished to the world:

Epistemological relativism versus the unity of truth, as per Sin VII

Sin VII results

“The proof of the pudding is in the eating”

Out of laziness or inattention, this old aphorism is often spoken as “the proof is in the pudding”, but, consider, why would there be proof in a pudding? The only situation in which there’d be proof in the pudding is if it had been prepared with whisky, perhaps “40% proof” alcohol. And that, ordinarily, is not the case.

The correct rendering of this aphorism is as above. Expanded, it denotes that the *quality* of a pudding is not measured by its appearance, its provenance, the price of its ingredients, the value of the kitchen in which it was cooked, the popularity of the restaurant, survey results as to whether or not it *should* be good, the reputation of the chef, or the moral stance of the sous-chef.   The only *valid* way to assess the quality of a pudding  … is to eat it!

I trust this assertion meets with no argument.

I might venture: the *true* proof of the pudding is in the eating.

And in such an assertion we find the most sinister of consequences of the sins of SSR.

Whether with intention or not, the content of SSR led to that theft of truth referred to as “epistemological relativism”.

Which is, in a nutshell: I can have my “truth” of a matter, you can have your “truth” of a matter, and the two “truths” may be perfectly mutually exclusive, and that’s fine.

Worse, one “truth” may have much more evidence in its favour than the other, but that doesn’t matter either, because if they are believed strongly enough they both get called “truth”.

Worse still, as a consequence, nothing is a “fact”. 

Anything and everything can be a “truth”, and nothing can be a “fact”.

Epistemological relativism and its flow-on manifestations have negatively impacted not just our academia and our universities but the entire bases on which matters of importance are discussed and decided across our entire society.

1)  If I can have my “truth” and you can have your different “truth”, and the two truths are mutually incompatible, then there is no remaining word in the English language for *the* truth. 

2)  All very well when the dispute is merely theoretical, but when practical matters need to be decided between these two “truths” then a means of prioritising the better “truth” is required. However, following Kuhn, one “truth” may be declared no better than the other “truth”, merely “different”, and that is supposedly the end of the matter.

3)  That said, we might also follow Kuhn to thinking that at any given time “truth” is merely the most popular opinion at that moment. Kuhn also makes it clear at great length that concepts of “truth” are often ephemeral, and it follows that there can be no statement declared beyond any doubt to be “fact”. 

4)  Multiple “truths’, but not any “facts”: that is Kuhn’s legacy

5)  Examples of the *pandemonium* that has resulted from there being, in our society, multiple contradictory “truths” without any “facts” are legion, but in writing this book *I dare not* quote any such examples for fear the book will thence be *banned*

6)  In absence of agreed truth, in absence of facts, our society functions in the way Kuhn described “pre-paradigmatic” societies. Mired in tribalism.

No Generally Agreed Epistemology

Britannica tells us

epistemology, the philosophical study of the nature, origin, and limits of human knowledge. The term is derived from the Greek epistēmē(“knowledge”) and logos (“reason”), and accordingly the field is sometimes referred to as the theory of knowledge. Epistemology has a long history within Western philosophy, beginning with the ancient Greeks and continuing to the present. Along with metaphysics, logic, and ethics, it is one of the four main branches of philosophy, and nearly every great philosopher has contributed to it.

But if you read the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on epistemology, what you find is a thousand ways in which purported knowledge is *false* but not a single way in which knowledge is *sound*.

It might be too much to ask for an exact algorithm by which truth may be discerned from falsehood, but what we have today, following Kuhnian thinking, is *no generally agreed epistemology*.

How do we tell truth from falsehood?

We don’t know.

We can’t say.

It depends.

And what is weird today is that being aware of a plethora of means by which a statement may be doubted, is considered more clever than making a single true statement.

In the academy of today, doubt reigns. Uncertainty is supreme, and according to current academics the best answer is a proud boast that no answer exists.

…..

What happens when every viewpoint is considered equally valid, equally “true”, even when entirely contradictory to other viewpoints also claiming to be “true”?

What happens when a poorly evidenced viewpoint can claim equal “truthness” to a well evidenced viewpoint?

Postmodernism and Power

A protest is planned this weekend. Thousands are expected to descend upon a city bridge as a display of numbers in support of one side of a certain geopolitical conflict half a world away.

Local police submit to the State Court that the protest will be dangerous, creating unacceptable risk, and the Court agrees. The Court disallows the protest to proceed.

A protest organiser is then interviewed on (government) radio. “No”, she declares, “The protest is legal! It’s going ahead”.

Question: since when did ordinary citizens get to decide what’s legal and what isn’t in defiance of a Court?

Well, if Truth is whatever someone thinks it is, why not “legal”?

But this is where postmodernists are hanged by their own petard.

Following Foucault, the postmodern protest is that all human actions, relations, decisions, situations are all about power. And in a trivial sense that can’t not be true. Those who can, might, and those who can’t, won’t. Thucydides, and all that. But if relations are to be guided by not power, they must be guided by something else. Coin toss? Well what about “truth”? So the irony is: in eliminating reference to generally agreed truth determining behaviour, postmodernists exacerbate the influence of its only substitute: power.

Dwell on this. In a forest or in a jungle, on the African savannahs or in an Amazonian rainforest, we have no doubt that relations between species and between conspecifics really are determined by power. Behaviours may be *borne* of genetics, biological needs and drives, and (if you like) the individual wills and preferences and personalities of the individuals themselves, but *outcomes* are determined by respective capacities for power. Again, this is trivially true - the lion eats the zebra, but the reverse does not occur. There’s nothing profound about such an insight.

As far as we know, or can infer, the same situation pertained among our prehistoric ancestors. An alternative is barely imaginable.

Whereas the genius of human life over the last many thousand years has been the institution, within each tribe, between neighbouring tribes, within each “nation”, between neighbouring “nations”, of a generally agreed “omniparadigm” (to coin a term) amounting to a set of perspectives beliefs laws and principles that guide behaviour. This begins with a generally-agreed epistemology, and thus a generally-agreed philosophy (ontology, ethics) then manifesting as laws and customs. 

What then arises, invariably, from a general agreement with the omniparadigm is that power relations are bridled, constrained, or counterbalanced by *other* power relations such that behavioural outcomes more closely align with those deemed desirable under the auspices of the omniparadigm. So for example if a big strong individual murders a weaker individual the omniparadigm institutes a countervailing response to deter such simple unidimensional power-based behaviours. A more complex, multidimensional power network prevails, designed to bring about better overall outcomes.

Quite obviously, these omniparadigms change with time, as one tribe learns from another, or defeats another, or as tribes coalesce, or as individual sub-paradigms undergo the “revolutions” Kuhn describes. 

Kuhn, or Kuhnianism, posits that the new omniparadigm is neither better nor worse than the previous.

Such a conclusion cannot but precipitate an undermining of the function of the omniparadigm, but Kuhn does not and cannot put a better omniparadigm in its place. Only one outcome is left - a resurgence of the pre-omni-paradigmatic “law of the jungle”: unalloyed unidimensional power, expressed in numbers, conflict, shouting, placard-waving and, ultimately, violence. 

By demonstration Kuhn admitted as much the day he threw an ashtray at Errol Morris. Without a shared structure within which to resolve their differences, Kuhn himself resorted to violence.

When I was but a tiny lad of just 6 or 7 I remember seeing another kid’s schoolcase with the following sticker affixed: “Subvert the Dominant Paradigm”. It stuck in my mind because I thought I understood most words but I had no idea as to what any of these words meant (and my schoolmate certainly didn’t either). But its very existence on that school case in an entirely non-descript infants school in Sydney Australia in 1968 demonstrates both the reach and the kind of impact Kuhn’s SSR was having across the societal landscape - it became the clarion-call of the groovy malcontented, 

We live today in a world that has never seen more protests but has never had less to protest about. Steven Pinker in his tome “Better Angels of our Natures” records in overwhelming detail the steady and enormous and relentless *drop* in violence rates that have occurred over the last 10,000, or 1,000, or 100 years. In terms of violence of any sort our world and our societies have become unquestionably and unmistakably better and better, safer and safer. Hans Rosling’s work “Factfulness” sets out with masterful clarity how so many aspects of life on this planet have *improved* (for people *as well as* for the planet) while the popular imagination has it that those same aspects are getting worse.

So, why the “cognitive dissonance” between demonstrable reality and popular perception?

Well, in order to agree on what is true we must first agree on what is “truth”, and how truth is ascertained … and as we do not agree on the latter so too we cannot agree on the former. Thank you Thomas Kuhn. 

And so the protests roll on.

Choosing to here discuss in detail any particular popular protests today would risk getting sidetracked into those controversies. It would be a distraction to seek to litigate any aspect of such protests at this juncture. Nonetheless, some general statements can be made as they may relate to Kuhnianism.

Some protests arise as a means of *informing* the broader public as to the existence of the matter of the protesters’ concern, but much more often the broader public *is already aware* of the issue of contention and the point of the process is either to *display the popularity* of one viewpoint of the issue at hand and/or *force* the protesters viewpoint to the fore despite it being not held popularly. The former may be seen as democracy-in-action, and the latter is an ideological insurrection (and sometimes both concepts may be in play, that is, a democratic insurrection).

In the case of a protesting insurrection, what are we seeing? 

We are seeing the result of *paradigm incommensurability*. 

We see protesters who share a certain paradigm, and who believe *there is no point* in trying to reconcile their own thoughts with those of the broader society in which they have chosen to protest. Protesters who have given up on debate, and who believe that only by force, not by conversation, can their own paradigm rise.

Where did they get the idea inter-paradigmatic conversations are futile? Who else but Kuhn?

Further irony: within the broad compass of human thought, it is far more likely in the *sciences* that minds change. Science, sensitive as it is to evidence, is the one faculty where you’ll find that happening. As Carl Sagan wrote:

"In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion"

And it doesn’t happen much in philosophy either. Indeed, in the world of academic philosophy, agreeing with what one’s forebears and peers have written and thought is the pathway to mediocrity, obscurity and poverty. Only in vehement disagreement and purple rhetoric can renown be found - witness the ascent of Nietzsche once he started slandering Schopenhauer, or the kick-along in Kuhn’s own career once he “beat” Popper, or the fame of Foucault once he defamed everybody else.

Erudite readers will now quote Planck’s Principle. Physics Nobel laureate Max Planck (1858 - 1947) once wrote: 

“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.”

And Kuhn and his Kuhnians love that quote, and often use it to support the incommensurability thesis.

Conversely, philosopher John T Blackmore published the following, in “The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, Volume 29, Number 4”:

“I think that Thomas Kuhn and many of his followers have been misled by Planck's much-quoted observation and have treated it as more reliable and important than it is. In point of fact, Planck was an exception to his own 'principle', many of his most illustrious colleagues were too, and the relativistic implications which Kuhn and others have drawn from it are diametrically opposed to Planck's specific comments on that subject. In short, Planck's 'principle' was a mere obiter dictumwhich reflected neither his most fundamental beliefs nor the scientific practice of himself or the great men around him.” …

And Blackmore went on then, in this article, to quote example after example after example after example of not only Max Planck changing his mind in light of new evidence, but also each of his most significant contemporaries in physics doing exactly the same: changing mind in light of new evidence, e.g. Helmholtz, Ostwald, Heisenberg.

So, no: so-called “Planck’s Principle” turns out to be not much of a principle, not intended by Planck to be one at least.

…..

What next for our protesting community? What next for those who feel justified, by Kuhnian thinking, to ignore prevailing “paradigms” and think them simply “incommensurate” with their own views, that Kuhn seems to teach are “just different”? What next, bolstered as they are by Foucauldian ideas that prevailing paradigms are mere performative devices disingenuously deployed to perpetuate power?

Well, they may be right. It may be that whatever idea the protesters purvey might lead our broader society to a better future. That possibility cannot be dismissed.

Or they may be wrong, yet still prevail. It seems a distinct possibility that certain minority groups, determinedly protesting loudly and longly, will persuade governments to acquiesce to their demands, despite convincing evidence of them being correct, and we may all end up all the poorer for that acquiescence to have come to pass. And in some regards this is happening already.

A third possibility is that our protesters, protesting as they do by non-legal means, mouthing non-rational slogans formulated by non-logical algorithms based on non-reliable assertions and non-validateable evidence, will inspire non-legal responses.

Acting outside the law, and outside legal process, why would not such protesters be met with *responses* acting outside the law and outside legal process?

Is this not inevitable once prevailing mechanisms of truth-searching and dispute-resolution have been cast aside?

Do we not, inexorably, return to a law-of-jungle situation?

Where else can we end up, if bereft of facts and truth?

We can only end up mired in raw power-plays - the very society postmodernists claimed to want to overthrow is the exact-but-worse society they are making.

ONE IDEA - KAPUT

Bringing the Seven Sins together we find

Sin I is that in textbooks there is not truth

Sin II is that scientists are merely human, speaking not necessarily truth

Sin III is that new scientific ideas are difficult and a bit random in generation - not necessarily true

Sin IV is that normal science is mere puzzling-solving, not adding to real truth

Sin V is that science will hold a big idea, and then switch to a completely different, incommensurate, big idea … without either being more true than the other

Sin VI is to write that science is no more true that humanities subjects, and they are, in turn, pre-paradigmatic, which amounts to a bunch of opinions

Sin VII is that science does not approach truth.

There’s a pattern here - Kuhn’s overarching thesis is that science, and scientists, are to be doubted as sources of truth.

And doubted they were, and have been ever since.

To all our detriment