Physics advances like geography: there's a New World in the Americas, but Libson is still there. Newtonian mechanics remains as the consequence of relativity and quantum mechanics where we "live," and the existence of other things under different conditions doesn't change that. Kuhnian revolutions involve the old models being discarded.
"If awareness of anomaly plays a role in the emergence of new sorts of phenomena, it should surprise no one that a similar but more profound awareness is prerequisite to all acceptable changes of theory. On this point historical evidence is, I think, entirely unequivocal. The state of Ptolemaic astronomy was a scandal before Copernicus’ announcement. Galileo’s contributions to the study of motion depended closely upon difficulties discovered in Aristotle’s theory by scholastic critics. Newton’s new theory of light and color originated in the discovery that none of the existing pre-paradigm theories would account for the length of the spectrum, and the wave theory that replaced Newton’s was announced in the midst of growing concern about anomalies in the relation of diffraction and polarization effects to Newton’s theory. Thermodynamics was born from the collision of two existing nineteenth-century physical theories, and quantum mechanics from a variety of difficulties surrounding black-body radiation, specific heats, and the photoelectric effect.4 Furthermore, in all these cases except that of Newton the awareness of anomaly had lasted so long and penetrated so deep that one can appropriately describe the fields affected by it as in a state of growing crisis."
Later in the same chapter, he gives three examples of crises that led to paradigmatic revolutions: "a particularly famous case of paradigm change, the emergence of Copernican astronomy."; "the crisis that preceded the emergence of Lavoisier’s oxygen theory of combustion"; and "the late nineteenth century crisis in physics that prepared the way for the emergence of relativity theory."
Kuhn absolutely considered relativity and quantum mechanics to be examples of paradigmatic revolutions, just like Newtonian mechanics in the 17th Century and the earlier Copernican revolution.
If you want to argue that Kuhn was wrong about history, then you can do that (and I would at least partly agree); but if you want to claim Kuhn didn't say what he actually said, that's a different matter.
If you read Kuhn's book, you'll see he uses quantum mechanics as one of his examples of a scientific revolution. I mean, you might think he's wrong, but that's stretching the definition of "Kuhnian Revolution" a bit. And sure, Newtonian mechanics might come out in the classical limit, but the probabilistic aspect of QM alone represents a completely different way of viewing the universe than the Newtonian model.
We did "discard" newtonian gravity and mechanics in favor of sr,gr and qm as fundamental theories. They still give good approximations over a wide range of conditions so we keep using them for calculations.
whatshisface|1 year ago
Keysh|1 year ago
"If awareness of anomaly plays a role in the emergence of new sorts of phenomena, it should surprise no one that a similar but more profound awareness is prerequisite to all acceptable changes of theory. On this point historical evidence is, I think, entirely unequivocal. The state of Ptolemaic astronomy was a scandal before Copernicus’ announcement. Galileo’s contributions to the study of motion depended closely upon difficulties discovered in Aristotle’s theory by scholastic critics. Newton’s new theory of light and color originated in the discovery that none of the existing pre-paradigm theories would account for the length of the spectrum, and the wave theory that replaced Newton’s was announced in the midst of growing concern about anomalies in the relation of diffraction and polarization effects to Newton’s theory. Thermodynamics was born from the collision of two existing nineteenth-century physical theories, and quantum mechanics from a variety of difficulties surrounding black-body radiation, specific heats, and the photoelectric effect.4 Furthermore, in all these cases except that of Newton the awareness of anomaly had lasted so long and penetrated so deep that one can appropriately describe the fields affected by it as in a state of growing crisis."
Later in the same chapter, he gives three examples of crises that led to paradigmatic revolutions: "a particularly famous case of paradigm change, the emergence of Copernican astronomy."; "the crisis that preceded the emergence of Lavoisier’s oxygen theory of combustion"; and "the late nineteenth century crisis in physics that prepared the way for the emergence of relativity theory."
Kuhn absolutely considered relativity and quantum mechanics to be examples of paradigmatic revolutions, just like Newtonian mechanics in the 17th Century and the earlier Copernican revolution.
If you want to argue that Kuhn was wrong about history, then you can do that (and I would at least partly agree); but if you want to claim Kuhn didn't say what he actually said, that's a different matter.
libraryofbabel|1 year ago
shwouchk|1 year ago