If the point you’re trying to make is: “the way we go from preparadigmatic to paradigmatic is by solving some hard problems, not by communicating initial frames and idea”, I think this points to an important point indeed.
Still, two caveats:
First, Kuhn’s concept of paradigm is quite an oversimplification of what actually happens in the history of science (and the history of most fields). More recent works that go through history in much more detail realize that at any point in fields there are often many different pieces of paradigms, or some strong paradigm for a key “solved” part of the field and then a lot of debated alternative for more concrete specific details.
Generally, I think the discourse on history and philosophy of science on LW would improve a lot if it didn’t mostly rely on one (influential) book published in the 60s, before much of the strong effort to really understand history of science and practices.
Second, to steelman John’s point, I don’t think he means that you should only communicate your frame. He’s the first to actively try to apply his frames to some concrete problems, and to argue for their impressiveness. Instead, I read him as pointing to a bunch of different needs in a preparadigmatic field (which maybe he could separate better ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)
That in a preparadigmatic field, there is no accepted way of tackling the problems/phenomena. So if you want anyone else to understand you, you need to bridge a bigger inferential distance than in a paradigmatic field (or even a partially paradigmatic field), because you don’t even see the problem in the same way, at a fundamental level.
That if your goal is to create a paradigm, almost by definition you need to explain and communicate your paradigm. There is a part of propaganda in defending any proposed paradigm, especially when the initial frame is alien to most people, and even the impressiveness require some level of interpretation.
That one way (not the only way) by which a paradigm emerges is by taking different insights from different clunky frames, and unifying them (for a classic example, Newton relied on many previous basic frames, from Kepler’s laws to Galileo’s interpretation of force as causing acceleration). But this requires that the clunky frames are at least communicated clearly.
If the point you’re trying to make is: “the way we go from preparadigmatic to paradigmatic is by solving some hard problems, not by communicating initial frames and idea”, I think this points to an important point indeed.
Still, two caveats:
First, Kuhn’s concept of paradigm is quite an oversimplification of what actually happens in the history of science (and the history of most fields). More recent works that go through history in much more detail realize that at any point in fields there are often many different pieces of paradigms, or some strong paradigm for a key “solved” part of the field and then a lot of debated alternative for more concrete specific details.
Generally, I think the discourse on history and philosophy of science on LW would improve a lot if it didn’t mostly rely on one (influential) book published in the 60s, before much of the strong effort to really understand history of science and practices.
Second, to steelman John’s point, I don’t think he means that you should only communicate your frame. He’s the first to actively try to apply his frames to some concrete problems, and to argue for their impressiveness. Instead, I read him as pointing to a bunch of different needs in a preparadigmatic field (which maybe he could separate better ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)
That in a preparadigmatic field, there is no accepted way of tackling the problems/phenomena. So if you want anyone else to understand you, you need to bridge a bigger inferential distance than in a paradigmatic field (or even a partially paradigmatic field), because you don’t even see the problem in the same way, at a fundamental level.
That if your goal is to create a paradigm, almost by definition you need to explain and communicate your paradigm. There is a part of propaganda in defending any proposed paradigm, especially when the initial frame is alien to most people, and even the impressiveness require some level of interpretation.
That one way (not the only way) by which a paradigm emerges is by taking different insights from different clunky frames, and unifying them (for a classic example, Newton relied on many previous basic frames, from Kepler’s laws to Galileo’s interpretation of force as causing acceleration). But this requires that the clunky frames are at least communicated clearly.