Thomas Kuhn's Perspectivism
Discussion
Eric Schaetzle:
"Recently Tamler Summers and David Pizarro discussed Kuhn's book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions on their podcast Very Bad Wizards. Tamler appeared to have a better understanding of the conceptual foundations of perspectival realism than his co-host David, who was operating much more within the nominalist paradigm. As a result they were unable to reach a common understanding and hilariously recapitulated some of the same debates prompted by the original publication of Kuhn's book! The role that the observer plays in the selection, interpretation, and utilization of scientific theories is of central importance to Kuhn. In fact, without a very clear understanding of exactly what constitutes the dynamic role of the observer (whether this is conceived of in the usual anthropomorphic sense, replete with values etc, or as a more basic relation) it is impossible to understand him.
But I'm getting too far ahead, so let's take a step back. Thomas Kuhn argued for a 'third position' that, at the time, few people could see or appreciate. That position elided the simple categories of relativism and absolutism that Kuhn's admirers and critics were initially tempted to use when interpreting his work. That dichotomy (relativism and absolutism) is roughly synonymous to realism and nominalism, respectively. And as Cornelis de Waal wrote: "Whereas the nominalist claims that only individuals are real, the realist holds that relations are as real as the individual objects they relate." Kuhn developed the realist argument in the direction of perspectivism, and specifically the "perspectival realism" of Ronald Giere (as Giere himself argued, and Michela Massimi more recently). Kuhn's thesis has withstood the intervening decades well. There is "revolutionary science" occurring today, for examples I'd point to McGilchrist's study of brain lateralization (The Master and his Emissary), Rovelli's relational quantum mechanics (Helgoland), Hoffmeyer's biosemiotics (Signs of Meaning in the Universe), and Friston's active inference framework based on the free energy principle (which has been described as "a nuanced form of realism"). Those who criticize these bodies of work from a nominalist paradigm inevitably find them largely unintelligible, and their arrows fail to reach their target, but from a perspectivist paradigm they often can be seen to provide a more coherent explanation of evidence, accounting for apparent anomalies under the dominant nominalist paradigm. This isn't to say that such work is without errors, but that those errors are rarely exposed and addressed without understanding the relevant paradigm within which the work is situated.
Kuhn famously argued that the accumulation of a sufficient number of anomalies can trigger a crisis leading to a paradigm shift. This is what appears to be occurring today - a shift back to a form of perspectival science that better accounts for the role of observers. Here it is worth noting that, for a variety of reasons, within the majority of non-Western cultures perspectivism is regarded with less antagonism (see Viveiros de Castro and Eduardo Kohn). Such a renaissance will inevitably be more nuanced than previous iterations of perspectivism by virtue of integrating (and in some cases reinterpreting) the prior advancements of nominalist Western science. This process of integration is accounted for within Kuhn's concept of "progress through revolutions". And accordingly, since nominalism reached its apogee in American colonialism, it is here that the contrast will be felt most acutely, the transition will be most disrupting, and the misconceptions will be most profuse. From a nominalist perspective, it is highly improbable that the phases of change leading to a realist paradigm can be accurately predicted, and this applies to any discipline, and yet those who cannot fully release their grasp on the previous paradigm are today trying to anticipate what the world will look like under the next. The false prophets of our age are hopelessly confused. "The one thing I think you shouldn't say is that now we've found out what the world is really like," Kuhn said in one of his last interviews, "because that's not what I think the game is about." This firmly coincides with the Zhuangzian position, which in the words of Chad Hansen suggests "there is no final or ultimately broad perspective from which we can make judgments. All we can substitute for this global perspective is some local consensus. There may be occasions when we experience a gestalt broadening of perspective as revealing something real and significant (like waking from a dream), but we cannot extrapolate from that to claim to know the direction or final result of such gestalt leaps to broader perspectives, or a final state of knowing what to do." Strikingly, this is recognizably Kuhnian, almost verbatim, concerning the operation and ultimate aims of science. It is interesting to note that how these thinkers are interpreted, and whether they are held in low or high regard, depends on the characteristics of the currently ascendant paradigm. The rise of perspectivism, as we near the second quarter of the 21st century, is finally showing signs of eclipsing the nominalism of the 20th century, and the genius of Zhuangzi (and Kuhn) is finding wider appreciation in the West.
Thomas Kuhn's insights have informed many. In an interview with Steve Paulson, Stuart Kauffman said "The current scientific paradigm has done extraordinarily good work for at least 350 years. The reigning paradigm of reductionism goes back to the Greeks in the 1st century A.D., and then explodes with Newton and the idea of a deterministic universe. But reductionism breaks down once we try to explain biology and culture. The new view is that evolution of the universe is partially lawless and ceaselessly creative. We are the children of that creativity. This new scientific worldview brings with it a sense of membership with all of life and a responsibility for the planet that's largely missing in our secular world. If we can't transform our secular humanist, consumerist worldview into one in which we have this sense of responsibility, awe and wonder for the planet and all life, then we can't invent a global ethic. Yet we need it to create a transnational, mythic structure to sustain the global civilization that's emerging." A paradigm shift (or cognitive shift etc.) has different meanings for different people. It’s important because, as Brook Ziporyn wrote, "People are always trying to use some one-sided technique to master the world, to know it, identify it, and commodify it." Iain McGilchrist has been vocally warning of this tendency as well. But the shift we need to make isn't necessarily from one perspective to another (useful as that can be), but fundamentally we need a shift to understand how all one-sided perspectives, in and of themselves, operate to shape our world. Restoring the world will also involve restoring our ability to work with and understand the diversity of perspectives we share the planet with. Tellingly, understanding the influence of “perspectival delimitation” has not been a hallmark of contemporary society. "