Paradigms and Barriers: How Habits of Mind Govern Scientific Beliefs (Late Editions: Cultural Studies for the End of the Century)

ISBN: 0226505235

Author: Margolis, Howard

Condition: New

In Paradigms and Barriers Howard Margolis offers aninnovative interpretation of Thomas S. Kuhn's landmark ideaof "paradigm shifts," applying insights from cognitivepsychology to the history and philosophy of science.Building upon the arguments in his acclaimed Patterns,Thinking, and Cognition, Margolis suggests that thebreaking down of particular habits of mind-of critical"barriers"-is key to understanding the processes throughwhich one model or concept is supplanted by another.Margolis focuses on those revolutionary paradigm shifts-such as the switch from a Ptolemaic to a Copernicanworldview-where challenges to entrenched habits of mindare marked by incomprehension or indifference to a newparadigm. Margolis argues that the critical problem for arevolutionary shift in thinking lies in the robustness of thehabits of mind that reject the new ideas, relative to thehabits of mind that accept the new ideas.Margolis applies his theory to famous cases in the history ofscience, offering detailed explanations for the transitionfrom Ptolemaic to cosmological astronomy, the emergence ofprobability, the overthrow of phlogiston, and the emergenceof the central role of experiment in the seventeenth century.He in turn uses these historical examples to address largerissues, especially the nature of belief formation andcontemporary debates about the nature of science and theevolution of scientific ideas.Howard Margolis is a professor in the Harris Graduate Schoolof Public Policy Studies and in the College at the Universityof Chicago. He is the author of Selfishness, Altruism,and Rationality and Patterns, Thinking, andCognition, both published by the University of ChicagoPress.