Harzem Peter wrote:
On Mar 3, 2007, at 6:26 PM, jim guinee wrote:
"Are grief counsellors going to change their tune? I wouldn't bet on it."
Is anyone on this list going to make a paradigm shift in their
professional endeavors based on one study?
Why not? Physics did on the basis of one study (Einstein's three
brief theoretical papers in one year).
Actually not. Almost no one took Einstein's theory of relativity
seriously until after Eddington published the solar eclipse study of
1920. (Indeed, there's a standing joke that when a reporter said to
Eddington that only three people in the world even understood -- much
less believed -- the theory of relativity, Eddington quipped back,
"Really? Who's the third?") Many, many more studies had to come along
before relativity came to be generally accepted among physicists.
Perhaps you didn't mean relativity though:
The photoelectric effect paper, while a landmark, did not by itself
overturn a "paradigm." Indeed, it drew on Planck's earlier blackbody
raditation research.
The Brownian motion paper, while it solidified realism with resepct to
atoms, hardly overturned a "paradigm."
All that said, the real problem with Jim's characterization of the
situation, I think, is the knee-jerk Kuhnianism of there being definitie
"paradigms." Psychologists seem to have grabbed on ot Kuhn as being the
ONE TRUE model of the history of science. This error is probably due to
a set of historically contingent reasons (mainly having to do with the
relative simultaneity of the publication of Kuhns's _Structure of
Scientific Revolution_ with the start of the decline of behaviorism in
psychology), but it now makes psychologists look rather silly and
self-aggrandizing to those outside of the discipline. Although Kuhn's
model was an interesting generalization 45 years ago, it has since been
found wanting in all kinds of scientific particulars and is now mainly
of only historical interest among historians and philosophers of
science. Morever, the Kuhnian model was never intended to apply to
psychology (which, even if one takes the Kuhnian model seriously, is
obviously in the preparadigmatic multiple schools of thought stage). In
addition, WHATEVER the Kubler-Ross approach to death and dying is, is
certainly ISN'T a Kuhnian paradigm. It *might* be regarded as a theory
of a particular phenomenon buried deep within very broad science (though
it is so loose and impressionistic, the term "theory" probably inflates
its importance beyond all reason).
Finally, going Popperian (i.e., sure one study can overturn a theory)
isn't really going to get much more respect. Popper's most infliuential
student, Imre Lakatos, presented example after example of situations in
the natural science in which what initially looked like a refutation
turned out to be simply motivation to adjust (rather than reject) the
theory to accomodate the new data and then declare the theory to be
stronger and broder than ever before.
Regards,
Chris
--
Christopher D. Green
Department of Psychology
York University
Toronto, ON M3J 1P3
Canada
416-736-5115 ex. 66164
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.yorku.ca/christo
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