102 4. Code Model Linguistics: Patch or Abandon?
whatever the margin of permissible error, it should be consistently satisfied in a given field; and so on”
1996 :185. Kuhn continues, “There are also, however, values to be
used in judging whole theories: they must, first and foremost, permit puzzle-formulation and solution; where possible they should be simple, self-consistent, and plausible,
[--]compatible, that is, with other theories currently deployed” 1996
:185.
54
In defining the fourth component ‘exemplars’, Kuhn points to the most tangible of the components. He defines exemplars as “the concrete problem-solutions that students
encounter from the start of their scientific education, whether in laboratories, on exam- inations, or at the ends of chapters in science texts”
1996 :187. He notes that technical
problem-solutions found in the periodical literature also serve this role. Of course, Kuhn is well aware that different communities employ exemplars in differing ways, as well as
employing certain exemplars peculiar to themselves. He comments, “More than other sorts of components of the disciplinary matrix, differences between sets of exemplars
provide the community fine-structure of science. All physicists, for example, begin by learning the same exemplars …. As their training develops, however, the symbolic
generalizations they share are increasingly illustrated by different exemplars,” so that while they share a particular equation, “only its more elementary applications are
common to both groups”
1996 :187. In other words, while the larger community may
share basic exemplars, particular modifications and applications will be increasingly community and subcommunity specific. The ways in which subcommunities use and
modify exemplars proves to be quite significant, for as Kuhn explains, scientific revolution typically begins at the subcommunity level.
4.1.5. Shared examples
Kuhn’s original use of the term paradigm was in addressing a body of shared exam- ples and the role they play in a student’s disciplinary socialization. He was not concerned
so much with particular exemplars within a disciplinary matrix, but rather with how paradigms are learned and absorbed through a tacit learning process.
55
Exemplars are the primary type of shared example which Kuhn addresses, but models may also serve within
this component. As Kuhn describes it, students do not typically or simply study a theory in the
abstract; rather, they work problems. In describing the role and function of these
54
As Kuhn suggests, the values component includes the notions of plausibility held by a particular community. In discussing the issue of plausibility in phonological analysis, Burquest and Payne offer an interesting comment which
alludes to the tacit and communal quality of such values in linguistics: The importance of phonetic plausibility in the explanation of complementary distribution cannot be over-
emphasized. Unfortunately, phonologists have not yet come to universal agreement as to the details of what constitutes phonetic plausibility; but there is widespread agreement on the
[following] principle: If it is claimed that two sounds are manifestations of the same phonological unit, it is the analyst’s job to
demonstrate that the differences between the two sounds can be attributed to the different environments in which they occur.
Burquest and Payne 1993 :24; italics added
55
Tacit: “not expressed openly, but implied” Neufeldt 1989
.
4. Code Model Linguistics: Patch or Abandon? 103
problems, Kuhn is careful to identify his position as distinct from a traditional position held by philosophers of science, that “scientific knowledge is embedded in theory and
rules; problems are [simply] supplied to gain facility in their application” 1996
:187. Kuhn argues that such “localization of the cognitive content of science is wrong”
1996 :187. In contrast to the traditional position, he describes the relationship of theory
and problems as follows:
After the student has done many problems, he may gain only added facility by solving more. But at the start and for some time after, doing problems is learning consequential things
about nature. In the absence of such exemplars, the laws and theories he has previously learned would have little empirical content.
Kuhn 1996 :187–188
Beginning with elementary problems and then moving into increasingly complex ones, the student learns to pick out from among presumably infinite possibilities the
particular categories that the theory uses and thereby identifies as relevant. Kuhn suggests that scientists generally “solve puzzles by modeling them on previous
puzzle-solutions, often with only minimal recourse to symbolic generalizations” 1996
:189–190. In so doing, they learn “from problems to see situations as like each other, as subjects for the application of the same scientific law or law-sketch”
1996 :190.
That sort of learning is not acquired by exclusively verbal means. Rather it comes as one is given words together with concrete examples of how they function in use; nature and words
are learned together. … what results from this process is “tacit knowledge” which is learned by doing science rather than by acquiring rules for doing it.
Kuhn 1996 :191
Kuhn emphasizes the perspective-building role of problem working, stating:
The resultant ability to see a variety of situations as like each other … is, I think, the main thing a student acquires by doing exemplary problems, whether with a pencil and paper or in a
well-designed laboratory. After he has completed a certain number, which may vary widely from one individual to the next, he views the situations that confront him as a scientist in the
same gestalt as other members of his specialist’s group. For him they are no longer the same situation he had encountered when his training began. He has meanwhile assimilated a time-
tested and group-licensed way of seeing.
Kuhn 1996 :189
4.1.6. The mega-paradigm
