Yahoo Answers is shutting down on May 4th, 2021 (Eastern Time) and beginning April 20th, 2021 (Eastern Time) the Yahoo Answers website will be in read-only mode. There will be no changes to other Yahoo properties or services, or your Yahoo account. You can find more information about the Yahoo Answers shutdown and how to download your data on this help page.

Kuhn vs. Popper, or someone else? Who is the philosophy of science GOAT?

Update:

Dude; the question is for people who are au courant on philosophy of science. It it is not vague to that crowd. 

Update 2:

OK, Kuhn and Popper are from a previous generation. Who is hip now in philosophy of science? 

2 Answers

Relevance
  • j153e
    Lv 7
    1 week ago
    Favorite Answer

    Popper focused on one aspect of discerning material data:  could an hypothesis be contradicted by 5-sense data, or not.  If yes, then that materialism is science.

    However, imho he overemphasized falsification re verification, constructivism, and intuition.

    Falsification is a great concept, but Popper, unlike Kuhn (and Whitehead, Husserl, Bachelard, Godel, von Neumann, and M. Polanyi), was not especially trained in any science save psychology.

    Therefore, of the two, Kuhn is more broadly foundational, particularly the later Kuhn, i.e. after Kuhn's own self-awareness-proving shift from paradigm to frames of perspective, which awareness is also developed by Whitehead, Bachelard, Husserl, Godel, von Neumann, and Polanyi.  (I.e., the notion of "paradigm shift" appealed to the popular mind, but does not comport with the facts as developed in the more purely matter-based sciences.) 

    Imho, Whitehead, Husserl, Bachelard, Godel, von Neumann, and Polanyi developed significant insights into philosophies of science.  Popper emphasized an important and neglected aspect of epistemology, now taken as obvious, and Kuhn imho (and in his) over-stated the "phase change" hypothesis of theory building.

    Imho, there's a whole herd of GOATs in this field.

  • Anonymous
    1 week ago

    Kuhn vs. Popper regarding WHAT, exactly? FAIL. You couldn't be more vague if you tried. Perhaps you will find this list useful: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_philosophers...

    .

    Edit: LEARN TO COMMUNICATE IN CLEAR, COMPLETE SENTENCES. Your "question" is neither. As I said previously "dude" - FAIL. Let's add EPIC to that because if you are referring to the book "Kuhn vs Popper", which you should have specified, that's almost 20 years old and démodé en  philosophy of science.. 

    KELLER and CARTWRIGHT are two contemp[oraries worth reading who haven't been dead for 25 years

Still have questions? Get your answers by asking now.