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RESEARCH ARTICLE
Thomas S. Kuhn and the Transformation of the Concept of “Scientific Progress”
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1 Selçuk Üniversitesi, Edebiyat Fakültesi, Felsefe Bölümü 42130, Konya , Türkiye
Received: 6 April 2023 | Published online: 20 September 2023
© 2023 by the Authors. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution -Noncommercial 4.0 International License (CC-by the license) ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ )
Abstract
The aim of this study is to reveal how Thomas Kuhn’s understanding of scientific progress has changed and transformed in the historical process. Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, published in 1962, had a great impact on the scientific community. In fact, some circles declare that positivist and realist understandings of science have completely disappeared with this work, and a brand new scientific conception has taken its place. One of the most influential claims Kuhn made in this work was that he rejected the traditional understanding of cumulative progress and instead put forward revolutionary progress. However, Kuhn makes some revisions in his views in order to eliminate the criticisms directed at him in the process. As a result of these revisions, Kuhn deviates from the scientific progress he advocated in the first place. As a result, when Kuhn’s works after 1980 are taken into account, it is seen that he moved away from the understanding of revolutionary progress he put forward in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions and approached evolutionary progress in the Darwinian sense. In addition, it can be said that as a result of these revisions, Kuhn returned to a certain level to the positivist and realist understandings of science that he criticized radically in the first place.
Keywords
T. Kuhn
scientific progress
incommensurability
evolutionary development
scientific revolution.
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