DUMOUCHEL, PAUL GERARD; PHD

                         UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO (CANADA), 1987

                         SOCIOLOGY, SOCIAL STRUCTURE AND DEVELOPMENT (0700)
 

                         This essay is an attempt to show the relevance of social hypotheses for epistemology. It proceeds to do
                         this through a study of the works of T. S. Kuhn and K. R. Popper. My contention is that Popper's and
                         Kuhn's epistemologies constitute two versions of a unique model of the growth of science, a model
                         which is spelled out in Popper's logic of the growth of empirical knowledge. What specifies each version,
                         I argue, is an auxiliary hypothesis concerning science as a social system. For Popper this hypothesis is
                         that science is a rational social system, i.e., a spontaneous order where the agents who realize the
                         system can take cognizance of the conditions which make the system possible and under which it
                         functions. It is this hypothesis which, I claim, determines the form methodological rules receive in
                         Popper: conventions to which individual scientists are asked to agree and implicit descriptions of the way
                         scientists spontaneously act. This hypothesis also excludes from Popper's methodology certain rules
                         which are allowed by his logic of the growth of empirical knowledge. Yet it is an auxiliary hypothesis which
                         is never clearly stated; it constitutes a hidden premiss of the system. According to Kuhn, I argue, science
                         is an irrational social system, i.e., a spontaneous order where the agents who constitute the system
                         cannot, under penalty of destroying the system they realize, take cognizance of the conditions which
                         make the system possible and under which it functions. As in Popper's case this auxiliary social
                         hypothesis is a hidden premiss of the system. Given this hypothesis, Kuhn's description of normal
                         science, puzzle-solving and scientific revolutions can be reconstructed from Popper's logic of the growth
                         of empirical knowledge. Further, Kuhn's incommensurability thesis, I claim, stems from the fact that this
                         hypothesis remains a hidden premiss. Once this premiss is seen, I argue, the difficulties which gave rise
                         to the incommensurability thesis simply disappear. Finally I indicate what consequences follow from
                         taking into account the social dimension of science in our epistemological descriptions, and determine
                         the place of social phenomena among cognitive phenomena.

Social Systems Simulation Group P.O. Box 6904 San Diego, CA  92166-0904 Roland Werner, Principal Phone/FAX  (619) 660-1603