Abstract

Thomas Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" got people to pay attention to tradition in science. This thesis considers how what Kuhn says about paradigms is closely linked with the idea of science as involving tradition. ;Kuhn takes paradigms to be a source of coherence in scientific traditions and the carrier of them, i.e., in normal science traditions are embodied in paradigms and hence maintained by them. I argue that when Kuhn emphasizes the priority of paradigms, he is actually emphasizing the role of tradition in normal science. I suggest that Kuhn's discussion about the priority of paradigms not only shows that he emphasizes the role of tradition, it also clarifies how traditions are formed and changed. ;Kuhn's work is often taken as the basis for resisting the rational view of science. His "incommensurability thesis" and "community authority thesis" are viewed by people, such as Feyerabend, as implying science is arational of irrational. They suggest that in science there is only replacement of paradigms, not the continuation of tradition. ;To better understand Kuhn's view about tradition, I argue that we need to understand his views about practice, rule, and theory. Comparing Kuhn's and Wittgenstein's views, I argue that Kuhn holds that practice and rules stand at the same level. Thus when Kuhn emphasizes the priority of paradigms, what he wants to say is that paradigms are more binding and more complete than any set of rules for research that could be unequivocally abstracted from them. ;For Kuhn paradigm changes are caused by the discovery of new facts and the invention of new theories together and this takes time. Thus, when the old tradition gives way to the new one, many concepts and ideas of the old tradition will inevitably be retained. Moreover, during the change of tradition, the old tradition plays a role in the formation of the new one, a point that Kuhn overlooks. In addition, a change of tradition in the development of science usually appears as a change of a small part of science while the main part of it continues as before. ;I examine how tradition plays a role in scientific discovery and justification. I first clarify the understanding of the distinction between the context of discovery and the context of justification. What Kuhn should have said, I believe, is that just as in normal science scientists use solutions to typical problems as paradigms and solve new problems by imitating the way in which typical problems were solved, so they use paradigms of individual sciences as examples of inquiry and deal with crises in scientific revolutions. ;I argue that the process of the establishment of a new tradition is a rational process. ;In addition to these arguments, I argue against Kuhn's"community authority thesis". I point out that for Kuhn community authority does not come from or represent tradition, rather, it seems to be independent of traditional authority, even to be definitive of tradition.