Kuhn vs. Popper: The Struggle for the Soul of Science Book

I picked this up to read along with Thomas Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" because it seemed to present an argument against Kuhn and in the defense of another philosopher of science, Karl Popper. After reading about Kuhn's paradigms, I wanted another viewpoint about his ideas.

This book was exactly that. The author clearly sympathizes with Popper, whose ideas were apparently not as widespread or accepted as Kuhn's were. The ideas against Kuhn were interesting and plausible most of the time, however, I think the book would have been better for me had I been more familiar with Popper.

For more information on Kuhn's ideas, see my review of "The structure of Scientific Revolutions". Popper as opposed to Kuhn, is famous for delineating the idea of "Falsificationism" in science. That is, science can't really prove that things are, only that they aren't something else. The author uses this fact to liken Popper to democracy, continually finding fault with itself in a constructive and progressive way, whereas later in the book, Kuhn gets analogized to the Nazis. (Nazis?? Yeah. He went there.) The author claims that Kuhn takes a "winner takes it all" attitude and implies that that is somehow less democratic, fair, and right. Additionally, he claims that Kuhn encourages scientists not to think outside the box, and to only stay within the current paradigm.

The problem, though, is that I'm not sure that Kuhn really wanted everyone to take his ideas and live within them. That is, I'm sure he believed that his paradigms and revolutions were what actually happened and will continue to happen throughout history, but I don't know if he wanted everyone to be aware of this and change their own philosophies accordingly. His book seemed more like a history of what inevitably happens, not a plea for everyone to change how they think. I'm not sure, I'm not an expert on Kuhn, or Popper. Still, the author's arguments against Kuhn's popularity were interesting, even if they did often sound like they came from a school yard.

"Mom, Kuhn's creating paradigms again!"