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Douglas_Knight comments on Open thread, Nov. 02 - Nov. 08, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion
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I haven’t read it, and I’m not sure it’s really on the same topic, but a lot of people like the Golem (de) by Collins and Pinch (1993/1998).
How can a work on the history and philosophy of science be outdated? I suppose new information could rewrite history, but I don’t think that happened. Philosophy is more likely to change, particularly as scientists respond to Kuhn, but largely, they didn’t.
New information and representations and analysis of old information are both possible. I don't remember if Kuhn himself focused on the case of Galileo, but a lot of people took him to be a paradigmatic case (sorry!) and Feyerabend undermined a lot of that through close re-examination of primary sources, in support of his own particular philosophy of science.
Mainly 50 years of new history happened. People came up with concepts like "evidence-based medicine" and a bunch of concepts about how science is supposed to progress.
After dealing a bit more with HPS (history and philosophy of science) I get the impression like logical positivism simple ignored the arguments made against it. The New Atheist crowd simply reject criticism of logical positivism as obstruce postmodernism but I never heard someone actually engage the kind of arguments that Kuhn makes.
After I wrote the post I found a lectures series by Hakob Barseghyan. He makes a lot of sense and yet, for some reason HPS isn't in popular culture. I don't understand why HPS doesn't get taught in high schools.
That's not a new concept. That's a straightforward application of the scientific method (and some common sense) to the area which stubbornly resisted and continues to resist it.
I think both Kuhn and Barseghyan would say that there isn't a single thing that's "the scientific method" and that believing in such a thing isn't defensible when you look at the history of science.