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geology of Lyell, upon reconceptualizations of modes of discovery and forms of
content in other disciplines, no matter how distant. Progressivistic gradualism—so
central to most late 19th century versions of biological and geological history, and
so strongly abetted by the appearance of "progress" (at least to Westerners) in the
industrial and colonial expansion of Western nations, at least before the senseless
destruction of the First World War shattered all such illusions forever—became a
paradigm for all disciplines, not just for the sciences. Kuhn may have called upon
some classical notions from the arts and humanities to construct a great reform for
science; but his corrective also, and legitimately, worked back upon a source that
had strayed from a crucial root idea to become beguiled by a contrary notion about
change that seemed more "modern" and "prestigious."*
In addition, and finally, I think that Kuhn underestimated the potential role of
scientific ideas in resolving old puzzles that have long stymied humanistic
understanding of artistic creativity, and that remain seriously burdened by the hold
of theories as ancient as the Platonic notion of essences and universals. In a lovely
passage, directly following the "punctuational" quotation just cited, Kuhn
acknowledges that the Darwinian concept of species as varying
*I dare not even begin to enter the deepest and most difficult of all issues raised by
differences between scientific and humanistic practice: why does the history of scientific
ideas, even when proceeding in a punctuational mode, marked by quirky, unpredictable and
revolutionary shifts, undeniably move to better understanding (at least as measured
operationally by our technological successes)—that is, and not to mince words, to progress in
knowledge—whereas no similar vector can be discerned in the history of the arts, at least in
the sense that Picasso doesn't (either by any objective measure or by simple subjective
consensus) trump Leonardo, and Stravinsky doesn't surpass Bach (although later ages may
add new methods and styles to the arsenals of previous achievement). The naive answer—
that science searches for a knowable, objective, external reality that may justly be called
"true," whereas art's comparable standard of beauty must, to cite the cliche, lie in the eye of
the beholder—is probably basically sound, and probably explains a great deal more of this
apparent dilemma than most academic sophisticates would care to admit. (In this belief, I re-
main an old-fashioned, unreconstructed scientific realist—but then we all must take oaths of
fealty to our chosen profession.)
But I also acknowledge that the question remains far more complicated, and far more
enigmatic, than this fluffy claim of such charming naievete would indicate. After all, we only
"see" through our minds (not to mention our social organizations and their pervasive biases).
And our minds are freighted with a massive cargo of all the inherent structural baggage that
Kant called the synthetic a priori, and that modern biologists would translate as structures
inherited from ancestral brains that built no adaptations for what we designate as
"consciousness." In this light, why should we be "good" at knowing external reality? After
all, our vaunted consensuses—and on this point, Kant remains as modern as the latest
computer chip—may record as much about how our quirkily constructed brains must parse
this "reality," as about how external nature truly "works." But enough of unanswerable
questions! I only note that Kuhn himself raises this great issue in his closing thoughts on the
special character of science: "It is not only the scientific community that must be special. The
world of which that community is a part must also possess quite special characteristics, and
we are no closer than we were at the start to knowing what these must be. That problem—
What must the world be like in order that man may know it? —was not, however, created by
this essay. On the contrary, it is as old as science itself, and it remains unanswered."