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Thomas Kuhn, the Image of Science and the Image of Art: the First Manuscript of Structure

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Thomas Kuhn, the Image of Science and the Image of Art: the First Manuscript of Structure Thomas Kuhn, the Image of Science and the Image of Art: The First Manuscript of Structure J. C. Pinto de Oliveira State University of Campinas The firstmanuscriptofThe Structure of ScientificRevolutions,prob- ably written in late 1958, is available in the Kuhn Archive at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)1.Itisthefirst version of Chapter 1, which is the introduction to the book, and is completely different from the ver- sion that was published. In this article, I turn to the manuscript to show that at that time Kuhn considered the comparison between the image of science and the image of art as the most appropriate way to announce his project: to change the image of science by bringing it closer to the image of art. As I try to dem- onstrate, this appeal to the history of art is not merely occasional. And it allows us to understand Kuhn’s intriguing retrospective statement, according to which Structure was a belated product of his discovery of the parallels between science and art. Some passages from Kuhn’s unpublished manuscript are transcribed in the article. 1. Introduction Thomas Kuhn’s philosophy of science, which he developed by focusing on physics (and chemistry), was later applied by other authors to virtually all areas or disciplines of culture. What interests me here, however, is I thank MIT Institute Archives and Special Collections for the permission to quote from Kuhn’s manuscripts. I am very grateful to Amelia Oliveira for her research at MIT, de- veloped under my supervision, for her doctoral work. I would also like to thank Paul Hoyningen-Huene and two anonymous reviewers for their comments on earlier versions of this paper, as well as Baruana Calado for translations and revisions. 1. Kuhn Papers. MIT MC 240, Institute Archives and Special Collections, MIT Librar- ies, Cambridge, MA. (Kuhn M1: box 4, folder 3, SSR – Chapter 1 – What are Scientific Revolutions? – Kuhn M2: box 4, folder 3, SSR – Chapter 1 – Discoveries as Revolutionary). Hereafter Kuhn papers. Perspectives on Science 2017, vol. 25, no. 6 © 2017 by The Massachusetts Institute of Technology doi:10.1162/POSC_a_00264 746 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/POSC_a_00264 by guest on 25 September 2021 Perspectives on Science 747 the movement in the opposite direction: the role that one of these dis- ciplines, history of art, played in the conception of Kuhn’stheoryof science. In a 1969 article, his only published text concerning science and art, Kuhn makes a brief and intriguing observation about The Structure of ScientificRevolutions. He says the book was a belated product of his dis- covery of the parallels between science and art (Kuhn 1969, p. 340). This is a retrospective assertion about Structure,aswellasthatofthe “Postscript – 1969,” inwhichhesaysthathisideasonthedevelopment of science have been borrowed from other areas, including history of art (Kuhn 1970, p. 208). In the text of Structure itself, there are only a few and minor references to art.2 What justifies the present article is the fact that in the early manuscripts of Structure, available in the Kuhn Archive at MIT (to which I recently had access), the relationship between science and art is effectively taken by Kuhn as a fundamental aspect of the book. He considers the comparison between the image of science and the image of art, strongly contrasted, the most appropriate way to announce his project. In these terms, one can say that his purpose was to change the image of science by bringing it closer to the image of art. That is the first point I would like to highlight in this article and I do it in the following section by using the first manuscript of Structure.In Section 3, I try to show that the image of science outlined in this manuscript is actually present in the traditional conception. I take as a reference, in particular, an author like George Sarton, the main representative of the “old” historiography of science, which Kuhn criticizes. Not only does Sarton cultivate the traditional image of science, but also the traditional image of art, and the contrast between them, used by Kuhn. Finally, exploring the consequences of the rapprochement between science and art, I will suggest an explanation for the important impact Kuhn’s book had on other disciplines besides philosophy of science, extending its influence to virtually all areas of culture. 2. Science and Art in the First Manuscript of Structure Here I take into account what is probably the first manuscript of Structure, which I name M1.3 In it there is no indication of date, but the Archive index describes it as the first version of chapter 1 (Chapter 1, First draft, 2. See below the end of Section 3. 3. Kuhn Papers, box 4, folder 3, SSR—Chapter 1—What are Scientific Revolutions? Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/POSC_a_00264 by guest on 25 September 2021 748 Kuhn: Image of Science and Image of Art 1958–60), the introduction to the book. Moreover, in the preface to The Essential Tension, Kuhn writes: I spent the year 1958/59 as a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, California, intending to write a draft of the book on revolutions during my fellowship. Soon after arriving, I produced the first version of a chapter on revolutionary change (…). (Kuhn 1977, p. xviii) I believe that these observations allow us to state that it is effectively the first manuscript of the first chapter of Structure. It would have been written by Kuhn “soon after arriving” at Stanford in the fall of 1958 (Preston 2008, p. 7; Hufbauer 2012, pp. 443, 451, and 453–54; Marcum 2015, p. 15). Certainly still trying to stick to the limited space assigned to it in the positivist Encyclopedia, Kuhn reckoned the monograph would have only five chapters (and about eighty pages, according to the editors’ suggestion).4 In the manuscript, Kuhn already refers to the book by its full name and entitles chapter 1 “What are Scientific Revolutions?”.5 The first section of the chapter, which I discuss below, is entitled “Cumulativeness and Rev- olutions in Science.” Because of the restrictions involving copyright of unpublished texts, I am not publishing in full Kuhn’s text from this sec- tion, but I transcribe some passages from it (and from other parts of the manuscript), duly authorized.6 Kuhn starts the first section of the first manuscript of Structure by out- lining the traditional image of the development of science. According to it, scientific knowledge is like an ever-growing edifice: Though we may recognize it as metaphor, we must all see the appropriateness of describing science as an ever-growing edifice to which each scientist strives to add a few stones or a bit of mortar. Science appears to advance by accretion. (Kuhn M1, p. 2) 4. See M1, pp. 37–9, where Kuhn outlines the structure of the book at that time and a letter from Charles Morris to Kuhn in March 1960 (Kuhn Papers, box 25, folder 53). For a discussion on the publication of Structure in positivist Encyclopedia, see Pinto de Oliveira 2007 and 2015, and Uebel 2011. 5. There are 41 typewritten pages in the manuscript, about 10,000 words. It should not be confused with later manuscripts, such as those that Hoyningen-Huene (2015, p. 188n4) calls Proto-Structure and (with Matteo Collodel) Proto-Proto-Structure, which are already full versions of the book. In the manuscript’s cover page, Kuhn writes that it is “a preliminary draft of a fragment of a projected book” (of its first chapter). The chapter title was used by Kuhn much later (1987) in a text with other content (see Kuhn 2000, p. 130). 6. I also quote here from the text that can be considered the second manuscript of Structure, which I call M2 (Kuhn Papers, box 4, folder 3, SSR—Chapter 1—Discoveries as Revolutionary). It was not dated by Kuhn either, but the Archive identifies it as Chapter 1, Second draft, 1958–60. Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/POSC_a_00264 by guest on 25 September 2021 Perspectives on Science 749 And Kuhn soon reaches the point that particularly interests me here, the relationship between the development of science and the development of art. He initially compares the two disciplines to mark the difference between them, according to the traditional view, highlighting the specific cumulative nature of science: The most persuasive case for the concept of cumulativeness is made by the familiar contrast between the development of science and that of art. Both disciplines display continuity of historical development – neither could have reached its present state without its past – yet the relation of present to past in these two fields is clearly distinct. Einstein or Heisenberg could, we feel sure, have persuaded Newton that twentieth-century science has surpassed the science of the seventeenth century, but we anticipate no remotely similar conclusion from a debate between, say, Rembrandt and Picasso. In the arts successive developmental stages are autonomous and self-complete: no obvious external standard is available for comparisons between them. (Kuhn M1, pp. 2–3)7 Kuhn introduces the concept of incommensurability in the first manu- script. He first applies it, significantly, to art:8 The creative idiom of a Rembrandt, Bach, or Shakespeare resolves all its aesthetic problems and prohibits the consideration of others. Fundamentally new modes of aesthetic expression emerge only in intimate conjunction with a new perception of the aesthetic problem that the new modes must aim to resolve. Except in the realm of technique, the transition between one stage of artistic development and the next is a transition between incommensurables.
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