In an earlier post I wrote,
"Kuhn describes what that is. 'Yet one standard product of the scientific
enterprise is missing (from normal science, DH). Normal science does not aim
at novelties of fact or theory and, when successful, finds none."
You replied,
<<When I read Kuhn, and it has been a few years ago, I was disturbed
by that part. I think, and Kuhn is much more learned than I on this
matter, that I am highly skeptical of it. Not with the overall thrust of his
thesis, but certainly with the above. Let me give you a personal example
(fairly
trivial).
<<In some work I did many decades ago, I was investigating how the coefficient
of restitution behaved as bodies impacted. Everyone "knows" that e, the
coefficient, is invariant with the speed of impact; a few people "know" that
it rises to unity at very slow (1 cm/second and below) impact speeds.
<<My work started out as an investigation of the shape of the "e curve" as
impact speed varied, and how that curve differed with different
materials, As the experiments progressed, I found a "novel fact." The
curve of e vs impact speed DID NOT rise monotonically as impact speed
decreased, but, in fact, followed a different pattern. In every case the
e curve started at unity (close to it) at a very slow speed (0.2 cm/sec
or so), decreased as speed increased to about 1 or 2 cm/sec, then
INCREASED again as speed increased to 2 or 3 cm/sec, then decreased again
to a plateau value of a constant e somewhere around 4 cm/sec and above.
<<Bob -- that was a "novel fact," one I was not looking for; one that
rather completely redirected my experiments. I cannot see where it fits
Kuhn's words above at all. No -- I never did "solve" the problem from a
theoretical viewpoint; I tried, but came up empty and, finally, moved on
to other, more interesting, problems.>>
I'm not a Kuhn specialist. But let me try to fit your experience in with his
views as I see them. You ran into an unexpected anomaly with what most people
"know" about e.. You tried to resolve it theoretically. That's all very
Kuhnian, isn't it? When you didn't succeed, you turned to more interesting
problems. That's Kuhnian too. He said, "Even the most stubborn ones
(problems) usually respond at last to normal practice. Very often scientists
are willing to wait, particularly if there are many problems available in
other parts of the field" (p. 81).
Where does your experience not fit in with Kuhn?
As I understand Kuhn, in normal science the highest priority is given to
preserving the paradigm, if at all possible. That's what you tried to
preserve. That's what Raman was doing in the further example you gave..
<<In writing the above, I remembered that in the literature search I did after
observing the phenomenon, I found a 1919 (or so) article by Raman, I think in
the Journal of Physics. Raman is certainly a greater physicist than most of
us. He had observed the same phenomenon, using a very different physical
setup, published the data points and had smoothed out the curve, ignoring the
anomaly! >>
So he fudged the data a little bit in order to preserve the paradigm.
I take it the "shape of the e-curve" is not a sufficiently important problem
in physics for anyone to be upset if the objective data do not confirm
expectations about it. Apparently life goes on apace without resolving the
anomaly. . Kuhn said, "No paradigm ever completely resolves all its
problems" (p. 79).
I'm not sure I addressed your example adequately. If you wish to pursue this
little matter further, drop me a line.
Best regards,
Bob