Compare And Contrast Karl Popper And Thomas Khn

Science coming from the latin word scientia, meaning “knowledge”, is a systematic structure that builds and organizes knowledge from testable explanations and predictions about the universe. The nature of scientific progress and the rationality of scientific change lies between Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn. The two influential philosophers of the 20th century had very different views of science which has caused countless debates because of it. One of them, which I believe is most interesting, was the idea of the scientific method and the idea of there even being one. The tradition understanding of the scientific method, described since the ancient Greeks, was to look at the world with a scientific eye and observe it with no other preconceived

Kuhn believes that the everyday life as a scientist isn’t as heroic as Popper made it out to be. The average day in the lab may consist of tedious, repetitive labor which can need to a degree of error. If one result that we get is “wrong”, one that conflicts with the prevailing paradigm, is considered to be due to errors on the part of the researcher rather than findings which damage the consensus view. For example, a scientist may be trying to conduct an experiment to see if copper conducts electricity. If you set the experiment up accordingly and go to connect the two pieces together but nothing happens what are you supposed to do? The first thought should not be that we have just falsified this statement in a new profound way that should overturn the previous one but instead that we have made an error. The calibrations may have been off or we couldn’t of been using the wrong metal, but the obvious explanation is the scientist had made a mistake. Kuhn explains this when using Holism testing and states that, “anomalies are not counterexamples.” If every human error counted as a counter-example, all theories could possibly be falsified according to Popper. However, Kuhn explains that sometimes in experiments, humans mess up because no one can be can have the capability of being perfect all of the time. A scientist may instruct an experiment very carefully but there is typically a margin of error that is impossible to prevent. But how do we distinguish anomalies from counterexamples? The problem is being able to see when the theory has disagreed with the experiment enough or that we just made the wrong calibrations. Popper gives us no answer to this question while Kuhn explains it very thoroughly. I believe this to be the main factor of Kuhn’s claim being superior to Poppers. Kuhn understands the nature of science and the possibility for error and clearly explains that just because a claim