Linguistics and Kuhn’s two major senses of ‘paradigm’

114 4. Code Model Linguistics: Patch or Abandon? Kuhn continues, pointing out that such new communities invariable rewrite the history of the discipline they now dominate: When it repudiates a past paradigm, a scientific community simultaneously renounces, as a fit subject for professional scrutiny, most of the books and articles in which that paradigm had been embodied. Scientific education makes use of no equivalent for the art museum or the library of classics, and the result is sometimes a drastic distortion in the scientist’s perception of his discipline’s past. More than the practitioners of other creative fields, he comes to see it as leading in a straight line to the discipline’s present vantage. In short, he comes to see it as progress. No alternative is available to him while he remains in the field. Kuhn 1996 :167; italics added Kuhn also writes, “There are losses as well as gains in scientific revolutions, and scientists tend to be peculiarly blind to the former” Kuhn 1996 :167. In an illuminating footnote to this sentence, Kuhn adds: Historians of science often encounter this blindness in a particularly striking form. The group of students who come to them from the sciences is very often the most rewarding group they teach. But it is also usually the most frustrating at the start. Because science students “know the right answers,” it is particularly difficult to make them analyze an older science in its own terms. Kuhn 1996 :167, n. 3 In summary, Kuhn conceives of that progress as being punctuated by revolutionary periods, in which revolutionary science redefines the direction and goal of a discipline’s notion of progress. As such, revolution “is a destructive as well as a creative act” Horgan 1996 :43. Kuhn has “denied that science is constantly approaching truth. At the end of Structure he asserted that science, like life on earth, does not evolve toward any- thing, but only away from something,” namely, its former state of being and definition Horgan 1996 :43–44. Kuhn is simply suggesting that the interests, goals, and applications of sciences are contingent. They may remain relatively stable for a period of time, but they are subject to change.

4.2. Critiques within linguistics

This section addresses several critiques of Kuhn’s theory offered within the linguistic literature, including critiques addressing how Kuhn’s theory may be employed in an account of the history of linguistics.

4.2.1. Linguistics and Kuhn’s two major senses of ‘paradigm’

As has been mentioned, the polysemy with which Kuhn employed the term ‘paradigm’ in his 1962 text contributed to confusion regarding his thesis. This confusion has influenced linguists just as it has others. In his 1970 Postscript, Kuhn attempted to “rein in” the various senses of the term, keeping and elaborating upon two senses: [A] On the one hand, it [‘paradigm’] stands for the entire constellation of beliefs, values, techniques, and so on shared by the members of a given community Kuhn 1996 :175. [B] On the other, it denotes one sort of element in that constellation, the concrete puzzle- solutions which, employed as models or examples, can replace explicit rules as a basis for the solution of the remaining puzzles of normal science Kuhn 1996 :175. 4. Code Model Linguistics: Patch or Abandon? 115 In the context of a response to Makkai 1975 , James McCawley 1979 [orig. 1976] makes a noble effort to untangle Kuhn’s 1962 polysemy. 65 In some areas McCawley seems to have accurately interpreted and paraphrased Kuhn for his audience of linguists, but in others he neglects key points, sometimes overlooking important implications of Kuhn’s theory. In his defense, it should be noted that McCawley does offer a disclaimer of sorts, noting that his representation may not be exactly what Kuhn intended. Much of McCawley’s difficulty seems to stem from the fact that he only references the 1962 edition of Structure and does not seem to have synthesized the 1970 Postscript material. 66 He writes: The sense of ‘paradigm’ that will be most important in the discussion below is what a linguist might describe as a set of ‘markedness principles’. At any time, in any scientific community, there are certain factual and theoretical claims and approaches to the solution of problems which have acquired such prestige andor wide acceptance that members of the community feel free to employ them without offering further justification for them. … These claims and approaches are ‘unmarked’, as contrasted with ‘marked’ claims and approaches …; a person presenting a paper at a meeting cannot just assume ‘marked’ claims or approaches but must also defend them, or at least, he must if he is to retain his standing as a member of the community and not acquire the reputation of a gate-crasher or a crackpot. McCawley 1979 :224 For linguists invariably familiar with the notion of markedness, this analogy is indeed a useful characterization of how scientific communities may regard divergent paradigms. But, as do others who quote only from Kuhn 1962 , McCawley too easily equates ‘paradigm’ with ‘theory’, while missing the idea of conceptual commitments and the roll of shared examples as Kuhn highlights in his 1970 Postscript. This is unfortunate for McCawley’s readers, who may themselves be ill acquainted with Kuhn. In missing Kuhn’s Postscript, McCawley seems to suggest that a paradigm is simply a body of shared knowledge. Unfortunately, this oversight deleteriously affects his use of Kuhn’s theory. He writes: A paradigm need not even be consistent: several mutually inconsistent approaches may each have achieved sufficient status with a scientific community that any may be adopted without further ado. Within any scientific community there are likely to be subcommunities which have dif- ferent markedness principles than the whole community does. This will almost certainly be the case whenever the large community has an inconsistent paradigm …. A person can thus recognize a proposition as part of the paradigm of a community to which he belongs even though he does not accept that proposition himself. McCawley 1979 :225, italics added One may conjecture that McCawley considers the linguistic community to exhibit such an inconsistent paradigm. Whatever the case, in this comment McCawley makes a useful observation, but a somewhat flawed synthesis of Kuhn’s material. While he is 65 McCawley’s article has been published in two versions 1976 , 1979 , with additional footnote material occurring in the second version. This discussion references the 1979 version. 66 McCawley does reference a 1970 article by Kuhn, but that reference is to Reflections on My Critics in Lakatos and Musgrave 1970 :231–278, and not to Structure. 116 4. Code Model Linguistics: Patch or Abandon? obviously addressing the phenomenon of subcommunities, he neglects to note that the conceptual elements in the larger paradigm are hierarchically ordered, whereby sub- communities may share a superior level paradigm while maintaining distinct lower level paradigms. The higher level paradigm is not “inconsistent.” Rather, it is simply undefined in regard to lower level concerns, similar to the way that “animal” is undefined in terms of the lower level exemplars: dog, cat, deer, antelope, and so forth. In his overlooking such hierarchical structure, McCawley’s readers may draw the implication that theories are all related at a single level. A similar implication may be drawn regarding subcommunities. Following upon Makkai 1975 , McCawley offers an analogy for paradigm shift, which, like his markedness analogy, does prove useful, if only in part. McCawley suggests that investment in a new paradigm is reminiscent of investing capital in a market economy: In summary, to win an adherent to a new idea, you must convince him that the expenditure of intellectual capital that is involved in his adopting the idea will pay off in the things that matter to him. McCawley 1979 :227 He does not stop there, however, but continues with an earlier criticism regarding a common misuse of Kuhn by latent cumulativists: There is a deplorably common tendency to form an unholy synthesis of Kuhn’s notion of rev- olution with the previously standard view that science develops cumulatively, which yields the popular but totally unwarranted view that scientific revolutions are always for the better. I note in passing that Chomsky’s conception of the history of linguistics commits him to a view that there have been scientific revolutions for the worse in linguistics and psychology e.g., the ‘neogrammarian revolution’ and the ‘behaviorist revolution’. McCawley 1979 :223 Unfortunately, his polemics threaten to overshadow certain vital questions. He writes: I have espoused propositions that seem to be leading me toward Makkai’s conclusion that advertising in scientific communities may be particularly pernicious and may result in scien- tific conclusions for the worse. … The market for ideas has a pretty bad record as far as markets go. It is much easier to find revolutions for the worse in the market for ideas than in the markets for mundane things like writing instruments; there is no instance that I know of in which one type of writing instrument has supplanted another in which the new writing instrument did not enable people to do more writing, do it faster, and do it more cheaply. I think that suckers do get fleeced worse in the market for ideas than in the market for writing instruments. However, most of the wrath that this idea stimulates in me is directed not against the swindlers but against the suckers. Scientific communities get the scientific rev- olutions that they deserve. The members of a scientific community are in the business of acquiring and refining knowledge, and they thus ought to be adept at evaluating claims. If the community is filled with persons who have little awareness of the implications of their supposed knowledge and little concern with the critical evaluation of other ideas, people who are willing to invest their intellectual capital on a scientific vehicle that they haven’t given a thorough test-drive, then the community is in bad shape: it is in serious danger of mass invest- ment of its collective intellectual capital on worthless projects. However, if a community is in that bad shape, its members can’t have all that much intellectual capital to be bilked out of. … In the case of a healthy scientific community, irresponsible advertising is likely to be ineffective, since the community will be full of people adept at detecting its irresponsibility. McCawley 1979 :231–232 4. Code Model Linguistics: Patch or Abandon? 117 Unfortunately, McCawley is handling the social function of paradigm communities in a perfunctory manner. While he laments the fact that Kuhn did not adequately address the role of scientific communities in his 1962 edition, he has overlooked Kuhn’s discus- sion of such community structure and function in the 1970 Postscript see Kuhn 1996 :176–181. He has also overlooked the role such a community serves in training the student scientist to see the world through a particular paradigmatic “lens.” Most students learn a normal science paradigm as an orthodox unit and rarely ques- tion its presuppositions. They are fed only one paradigm, and are thereby ill equipped to make the sort of comparative investigation for which McCawley argues. Notions of inferiority are relative and typically have a directional bias. Students who “grew up” under a particular paradigm typically favor that paradigm by default, regardless of what other paradigms may surface. Kuhn would argue that the comparison of paradigms is not entirely possible anyway. Discussing the manner of instruction typically employed in the natural sciences, Kuhn writes: In these fields [i.e., the natural sciences] the student relies mainly on textbooks until, in his third or fourth year of graduate work, he begins his own research. Many science curricula do not ask even graduate students to read in works not written specially for students. The few that do assign supplementary reading in research papers and monographs restrict such assign- ments to the most advanced course and to materials that take up more or less where the available texts leave off. Until the very last stages in the education of a scientist, textbooks are systematically substituted for the creative scientific literature that make them possible. Given the confidence in their paradigms, which makes this educational technique possible, few scien- tists would wish to change it. … Of course, it is a narrow and rigid education, probably more so than any other except perhaps in orthodox theology. But for normal-scientific work, for puzzle-solving within the tradition that the textbooks define, the scientist is almost perfectly equipped. Furthermore, he is well equipped for another task as well—the generation through normal science of significant crises. When they arise, the scientist is not, of course, equally well prepared. Kuhn 1996 :165–166; italics added Of course McCawley’s terms “bad” and “good,” “bad shape” and “healthy” lack definition. More significant questions arise where McCawley neglects the role of normal science in defining the orthodox. In regard to buying into a new paradigm, the decision to switch depends largely upon the sort of needs and questions felt. If a scientist has fruit salad in mind, he might argue that apples are a better fruit than avocados. Another scientist, who has guacamole in mind, argues in favor of avocados. If the first scientist considers his science to be in the business of fruit salad, then, as he sees it, the second scientist has bought into a “bad” paradigm. Obviously, as he sees it, she is in “bad shape” and lacking in “intellectual capital.” Of what use is guacamole when fruit salad is so obviously the goal? The shortcoming in this portion of McCawley’s critique is rather simple. As Kuhn himself puts it, “Each group uses its own paradigm to argue in that paradigm’s defense” Kuhn 1996 :94; also see 92ff.. From our current perspective it would be easy, albeit absurd, to regard our forebears in the sciences with the comment, “Those stupid people They actually believed that the earth was flat” But with hindsight we may note that the flat-earth community was the dominant community, and members of that community were convinced that the 118 4. Code Model Linguistics: Patch or Abandon? round-earth community was buying into an inferior paradigm. If they want to believe the earth is round, then let them have it. After all, “scientific communities get the scientific revolutions that they deserve” McCawley 1979 :231. The preceding comments notwithstanding, McCawley’s investment analogy is useful. It can indeed be difficult to determine exactly how a community or individual should invest “intellectual capital.” Kuhn himself notes: “During periods of revolution when the fundamental tenets of a field are once more at issue, doubts are repeatedly expressed about the very possibility of continued progress if one or another of the opposed paradigms is adopted” Kuhn 1996 :163; italics added. If an analyst is satisfied with a paradigm, he may feel no need to abandon it. If others around him do feel such a need and abandon the earlier paradigm in favor of another, then, from the perspective of the first individual, they have abandoned what is logical and orthodox for something illogical and heretical. McCawley posits the inverse of the cumulativists’ presupposition. Whereas cumu- lativists posit that paradigm shift brings about a successive move toward scientific progress, he posits that it may be a move away from such progress. He has taken the antithetical position, but has made a similar error. The primary issue remains: How might one find a neutral position from which to make the evaluation? Obviously that position would require an objective stance. Kuhn offers little assistance here, arguing that, since paradigms are being evaluated by practitioners of paradigms, inherent biases can never be totally overcome 1996 :92–94. This is clearly a circular response. Kuhn is not una- ware of the circularity, and he attributes it to the nature of disciplinary communities in question. Since such communities define their own favorite problems, they may thereby insure that their favored paradigm always “comes out on top.” McCawley is primarily concerned with questions of productivity. In other words, should we abandon one treatment in favor of another before we have completed the first treatment? It may be an interesting question, but it fails to grasp Kuhn’s argument— namely, that science is not completely objective. If it were, then questions of productivity would be paramount and, it should be added, simple to answer. Is this to suggest that Kuhn is not interested in productivity? The answer is twofold. As addressed in section 4.1.11 , Kuhn does support the idea of progress as it has been conceived within normal science, but he also notes that the traditional characterization simply does not hold across scientific revolutions. In the process of revolution, a community may redefine the very notion of progress, so that progress expresses the presuppositions of the new paradigm, rather than the old.

4.2.2. Linguistics and Kuhn’s notion of a disciplinary life-cycle