Reading Questions for McMullin’s “Rationality and Paradigm Change in Science”

Due Date: 10/02

How well does McMullin’s summary of Kuhn square with your understanding of what we have read of Kuhn?

1. McMullin distinguishes shallow, intermediate, and deep revolutions. (a) Explain the nature and differences between these. Further, McMullin points out that, “What ‘revolutionary’ means in practice is a change that falls outside the normal range of puzzle-solving techniques and whose resolution cannot, therefore, be brought about by the ordinary resources of the paradigm”. (124) He then questions the sharpness of the revolutionary/normal-science distinction. (b) Explain his misgivings as to the sharpness of this distinction, as well as why he takes there to be “a spectrum of different levels of intractability”.

2. In Section 3 of the essay, McMullin reads the more recent Kuhn (correctly, I think) as claiming that certain overarching values guiding theory choice are relatively stable, changing only slowly and in minor ways—stable enough to lend some rationality to even deep revolutions. Others, like Laudan and Shapere, have rejected the claim of stability in these values. What does this issue (including whether the supposed stability is contingent or necessary) have to do with the depth of revolutions, and the objectivity (or lack thereof) of science?

Why does McMullin claim that predictive success and explanatory power were once considered antithetical in astronomy, and what is the significance of his claim that we now know that they are compatible?

Do we need a justification for our scientific values (which guide theory choice) in order for science as a whole to be justified or rational or objective? Can such a justification of methodology proceed from within science, or must it be somehow independent of science? Why does Kuhn think we cannot justify our values?

3. In section 4, McMullin gives his view of how epistemic values are validated. What is it? More specifically, which values cannot be justified, which can? What is the relation between the two kinds? How does McMullin address the Humean problem of induction?

In section 5 McMullin claims that Kuhn has a “more or less traditional view” (132) regarding the rationality of scientific change, but is an instrumentalist regarding the metaphysical (or ontological) issue of realism/antirealism. Explain what this issue is (the glossary may help with the italicized terms), as well as Kuhn’s stand on it.

4. McMullin then argues against Kuhn’s instrumentalism by reassesing one of Kuhn’s favorite case studies. Explain how McMullin’s argument goes; especially his rejection of Kuhn’s view that certain values are merely aesthetic or subjective.

What is the agenda we are left with?