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Where Is Psychology Going?
Structural Fault Lines Revealed by Psychologists’ Use of Kuhn
Erin Driver-Linn
Harvard University
Psychologists’ appropriation of language and ideas from
Thomas Kuhn’s (1962, 1970b) The Structure of Scientific
Revolutions reveals deep and contradictory concerns
about truth, science, and the progress of the field. The
author argues that psychologists, uncomfortably straddling
natural and social science traditions, reference Structure
for 2 reasons largely overlooked: first, because it presents
an intermediate, naturalistic position in the war between
relativist and rationalist views of scientific truth, and sec-
ond, because it presents a psychologized model of scientific
change. The author suggests that the history of this mutual
influence—psychologists being influenced by Kuhn and
vice versa—may usefully inform current practices of psy-
chological science.
The human understanding is no dry light, but receives an infusion
from the will and affections; whence proceed sciences which may
be called “sciences as one would.”
—Francis Bacon, Novum Organum
T
homas Kuhn’s (1962, 1970b) The Structure of Sci-
entific Revolutions has been referenced in psychol-
ogy journals a great deal for a history and philoso-
phy of science text—on average, about 55 times per year
(Coleman & Salamon, 1988, and see below). Accordingly,
gadflies have argued that there has been “all too much idle
chatter in loose Kuhnian terms about psychology” (Warren,
1972, p. 1196). Suppe (1984), for example, wrote that as
chairperson of one of the major history and philosophy of
science programs in the country, he ought to be overjoyed
with the spate of publications from a Kuhnian perspective.
Instead, he believed the dogmatic, ill-informed, and uncrit-
ical use of Kuhn to be distressing and feared that it might
result in “several decades in an orgy of unproductive sci-
entific practice” (Suppe, 1984, p. 100). Similarly, Holland
(1990) said there was a “paradigm plague,” despaired of
prevention, and instead suggested a tongue-in-cheek inoc-
ulation—to “plunge into prolific use of the paradigm con-
cept” until cured (pp. 24–25).
Why have psychologists gravitated to the language
and ideas in Structure? What can be learned from psychol-
ogists’ pervasive Kuhn referencing? I suggest that the
Kuhn chatter in psychology reflects earnestly held concerns
about divisions in the field, divisions that have arisen
because scientific psychology necessarily encompasses
both natural and social science traditions, which represent
competing positions on truth and progress. I argue that the
particular position on truth and the model of progress
presented in Structure have in some ways bridged, and in
other ways engendered, these divisions. Finally, I maintain
that the mutually influential relationship between psychol-
ogy and Kuhn’s text may provide perspective on some
consequential norms of the field.
Perceptions of a Splintered Discipline
Geertz, an anthropologist, provided a lovely summary of
what seems a typical view of psychology:
Since it got truly launched as a discipline and a profession in the
last half of the nineteenth century...theself-proclaimed “science
of the mind” has not just been troubled with a proliferation of
theories, methods, arguments, and techniques. That was only to be
expected. It has also been driven in wildly different directions by
wildly different notions as to what it is, as we say, “about”—what
sort of knowledge, of what sort of reality, to what sort of end it is
supposed to produce. From the outside, at least, it does not look
like a single field, divided into schools and specialties in the usual
way. It looks like an assortment of disparate and disconnected
inquires classed together because they all make reference in some
way or other to something or other called “mental functioning.”
Dozens of characters in search of a play....Thewide swings
between behaviorist, psychometric, cognitivist, depth psycholog-
ical, topological, developmentalist, neurological, evolutionist, and
culturalist conceptions of the subject have made being a psychol-
ogist an unsettled occupation, subject not only to fashion, as are
all the human sciences, but to sudden and frequent reversals of
course. Paradigms, wholly new ways of going about things, come
along not by the century, but by the decade; sometimes, it almost
seems, by the month. It takes either a preternaturally focused,
dogmatical individual, who can shut out any ideas but his or her
own, or a mercurial, hopelessly inquisitive one, who can keep
dozens of them in play at once, to remain upright amidst this
tumble of programs, promises, and proclamations. (Geertz, 2000,
pp. 187–188)
Editor’s note. Thomas H. Leahey served as action editor for this article.
Author’s note. I am very grateful for helpful advice and information
from Jerome Bruner, Peter Buck, Daniel Gilbert, Anne Harrington, Jay
Hook, Ken Nakayama, Barbara Rosenkrantz, and Sheldon White. I am
especially indebted to one nonanonymous reviewer, Rachel Rosner—
whose work and clarity hugely shaped the final product and whose
longsighted perspective lent me courage.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Erin
Driver-Linn, Department of Psychology, William James Hall, 33 Kirkland
Street, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138. E-mail: edl@
wjh.harvard.edu
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Copyright 2003 by the American Psychological Association, Inc. 0003-066X/03/$12.00
Vol. 58, No. 4, 269–278 DOI: 10.1037/0003-066X.58.4.269
Perceptions of psychology as beleaguered by fraction-
ation and uncertainty are almost ubiquitous (cf. Gruber &
Gruber, 1996; Kelly, 1998). The crisis may be seen in
psychologists’ need to publish or perish that reduces think-
ing before publishing (Salzinger, 1996), in a poor under-
standing of human life and of the relationship of the science
to the world (Bakan, 1996), in a lack of literacy in evolu-
tionary theory and genetics (Tobach, 1999), in the split
between the scientific and professional branches (Sexton,
1990), or in the split between the academic and the human-
istic orientations (Lincoln, 1994). It may be considered an
identity crisis that could be solved by requiring all psychol-
ogists to be solidly trained in the neurosciences (Panksepp,
1990). It may be seen in the dysfunctional symptoms of the
field (Mos, 1996). It may even be seen as unsolvable until
an unscientific approach is taken—one that does not buy
into the myths of the individual, mental illness, and devel-
opment, which have made psychology a pseudoscientific
hoax (Newman & Holzman, 1996). The crisis may be
thought of as acute in American psychology (Sexton, 1990)
and in social psychology (Ibanez, 1985; Pancer, 1997), as
resolved in the West but unresolved in Russia (Radzi-
khovskii, 1991), or as a misperception debunked by an
analysis of three leading Dutch journals of psychology
(Spangenberg & Nijhuis, 1985).
This perception of psychology as being in a state of
crisis is not a new one. As Cahan and White (1992)
reviewed, there is a long-standing schism between experi-
mental, laboratory-based psychology and interpretive,
meaning-based psychology. The problem is embodied in
the quotation from Mu¨nsterberg that opens Cahan and
White’s review: “Do we not deceive ourselves if we fancy
that we can approach the study of mental states with the
same naivete with which we can turn to the study of
minerals and plants” (Mu¨nsterberg, 1915, p. viii)? Psychol-
ogists study humans (or at least hope that the animals or
computer models that they study reveal something inter-
esting about humans), and humans studying humans is a
social enterprise, inherently subjective and interpretive.
Psychology may, then, unavoidably be a social science,
wedded to social science methods. Yet humans and the
products of humans are part of nature, and nature has been
studied objectively, in laboratories, to replicable, useful
ends. Psychology, then, can operate within and may prof-
itably gain from a natural science approach.
It seems, though, that in practice, scientific psycholo-
gists want to understand phenomena. Usually, these phe-
nomena can be best described using broad, descriptive
labels—for example, memory, depression, emotion, learn-
ing, aggression, and consciousness—the kind that might be
headings in introductory psychology textbooks. It seems
clear that to understand such phenomena requires work at
both natural and social, molecular and molar, levels of
analysis. So, as an enterprise, to understand such phenom-
ena, psychology looks for causal explanations with predic-
tive power as well as meaningful, resonant interpretations
of human behavior.
Thus, psychology straddles two rooted traditions, the
natural sciences and the social sciences. These traditions
have long been separated from one another (Bunge &
Ardila, 1987). Neither formal attempts to integrate psychol-
ogy nor formal attempts to split psychology appear to have
been enduringly successful (Cahan & White, 1992). It
stands to reason that psychologists suffer from crises of
identity.
The divide is serious—each tradition carries different
assumptions about what constitutes truth and, therefore,
different assumptions about what constitutes progress. It
turns out that Kuhn, in ways witting and unwitting, ad-
dressed this divide in Structure.
Kuhn’s Middling Position on Truth
The so-called science wars (Gross & Levitt, 1998; Rorty,
1999; Ross, 1996) are in essence disagreements about what
constitutes good science. These disagreements are derived
partly from the split between natural and social science
traditions. In simplistic terms (other than that is beyond the
scope of this article), the camps of the science wars include,
on one side, a loosely banded group that includes objecti-
vitists, rationalists, reductionists, positivists, and empiri-
cists. This side maintains that scientific laws and truths can
be gleaned through rigorous methods that winnow away the
subjective from the objective, putting a premium on natu-
rally occurring phenomena. On the other side is another
loosely banded group of humanists, relativists, postmod-
ernists, and social constructionists. This camp maintains
that the premises of the other camp are faulty, that the
objective cannot be winnowed away from the subjective.
The rationalist camp assumes that the practice of science
and, by extension, the products of science are not contam-
inated by external effects, whereas the relativists are almost
defined by their challenge to that assumption. Skirmishes in
this war have been waged and reviewed in several books
Erin Driver-
Linn
270 April 2003
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(e.g., Brante, Fuller, & Lynch, 1993; Cromer, 1997; Gross
& Levitt, 1998; Hacking, 1999; Ross, 1996), by philoso-
phers of science (e.g., Laudan, 1990), and doubtless in the
cocktail chitchat of many a faculty club.
It seems as if psychologists have internalized this war.
They either pick a side (against their colleagues) or main-
tain half a belief in empirical results as sacrosanct and half
a belief that science, like many products psychological, is,
a construction.
From this position of ambivalence, Kuhn’s philosophy
of science is an appealing one to marshal—it is popular and
catchy, and it strikes a balance in the war. How does it do
this?
The now famous and infamous argument in The Struc-
ture of Scientific Revolutions (Kuhn, 1962, 1970b) chal-
lenged a prevailing stance, and it was perhaps this, as well
as the timing of the monograph, that gained Structure wild
popularity (relative to other history and philosophy of
science texts). To summarize, Kuhn claimed that sciences
develop in identifiable stages: A budding science is some-
what disordered, made up of practitioners who do not share
the same language or tenets (he termed such sciences
pre-paradigmatic). It is only when these precepts coalesce,
when practitioners move from factionalism to a shared
viewpoint (making the science paradigmatic), that the sci-
ence can make significant progress. Significant changes in
viewpoint take place abruptly when something that has
remained unexplained prompts a new point of view (a
crisis in the science is resolved when an anomaly is iden-
tified and understood, thus initiating a revolution,apara-
digm shift). The new point of view cannot be integrated
with the old view (the two views are incommensurate).
Furthermore, this new point of view does not represent
advancement of knowledge (it does not presume accumu-
lation of knowledge); it merely represents a new set of
precepts. This last claim challenges the assumption that
sciences move increasingly toward truth. Kuhn wrote, at
the end of Structure,
It is now time to notice that until the last very few pages the term
“truth” had entered this essay only in a quotation from Francis
Bacon. And even in those pages it entered only as a source for the
scientist’s conviction that incompatible rules for doing science
cannot coexist except during revolutions when the profession’s
main task is to eliminate all sets but one. The developmental
process described in this essay has been a process of evolution
from primitive beginnings—a process whose successive stages
are characterized by an increasingly detailed and refined under-
standing of nature. But nothing that has been or will be said makes
it a process of evolution toward anything. Inevitably that lacuna
will have disturbed many readers. We are all deeply accustomed
to seeing science as the one enterprise that draws constantly
nearer to some goal set by nature in advance. (Kuhn, 1970b, pp.
170–171)
Kuhn’s claim that “scientific change does not consist in a
relentless approach to a waiting truth but in the rollings and
pitchings of disciplinary communities” was a “call to arms
for those who saw science as the last bastion of epistemic
privilege or a sin against reason for those who saw it as the
royal road to the really real” (Geertz, 2000, p. 163).
1
Thus,
Kuhn is often categorized as a thinker who looms large “in
the conceptual universe of the relativist” (Laudan, 1990,
p. xi).
Kuhn, however, suggested that both rationality and
relativism are implicated by the premise that the pursuit of
science is bound to history, and he formally rejected the
label of relativist in The Road Since Structure (Kuhn,
2000). It is worth rearticulating what he actually meant by
truth because it is an odd, middling position in the science
wars that readers may have picked up on but not quite
understood.
Kuhn (2000) said that the pivotal argument in Struc-
ture is one against “the correspondence theory of truth, the
notion that the goal, when evaluating scientific laws or
theories, is to determine whether or not they correspond to
an external, mind-independent world” (p. 99). This argu-
ment is not a strong relativist position because a conception
of truth is considered essential for scientists to make a
“choice between acceptance and rejection of a statement or
a theory in the face of evidence shared by all” (Kuhn, 2000,
p. 99). Unlike a radical relativist or constructionist, Kuhn
concluded that “underlying all these processes of differen-
tiation and change, there must, of course, be something
permanent, fixed, and stable” (Kuhn, 2000, p. 104).
Kuhn’s (2000) self-described “interesting sort of rel-
ativism” (p. 307) might be more accurately termed natu-
ralism (Mayo, 1996; Proctor & Capaldi, 2001). Naturalism
is an approach to methods of inquiry that maintains that, in
principle, no thing or event lies outside the reach of scien-
tific explanation; it avoids appeals to a priori claims of any
kind. Therefore, conclusions about the nature of science are
subject to study and criticism. This suggests, then, that
science produces “models of the world that may fit the
world more or less well in something like the way maps fit
the world more or less well” (Giere, 1999, p. 240). From
this perspective, what is gained in science is not truth but
working truths—very different from no truth.
Naturalism (with Kuhn as its most well-known, but
certainly not only, proponent) represents a particularly
hopeful approach for psychologists to take when plagued
by perceptions of crisis, caught between a natural science/
rationalist worldview and a social science/relativist world-
view. This position suggests that maps, or models, or
theories, or results can be empirically based, while ac-
knowledging the subjectivity inherent in psychological in-
quiry. Results can fit the world in ways that are discernibly
good or better than those of the past, without trying to make
the shaky claim that psychological science is progressing
toward perfect correspondence with a verifiable and objec-
tive reality.
This is not to say that psychologists tend to cotton to
Kuhn because they have it worked out that naturalism is a
1
As has been noted by Geertz (2000) and others, several theorists
around the same time were also challenging cumulative and rational
models of science (see, e.g., Hanson, 1958, 1970; Holton, 1964; Quine,
1953, 1969; Toulmin, 1961, 1972), but they have had far less impact in
psychology. Thanks to Peter Buck and Ken Nakayama for pointing out
these conceptual similarities and historical conjunctions.
271April 2003
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American Psychologist
usefully bridging philosophy of science. Although Kuhn’s
middling position on truth may have held an implicit appeal
to many psychologists, it was his related model of progress
that has held explicit appeal. As shown below, psycholo-
gists primarily reference Kuhn to make statements about
progress—either the field’s status as a science or their own
work described as signifying advancement. These state-
ments signal ambivalence and insecurity—the marks of a
field divided in approach and seeking some measure of
progress.
Kuhn’s Ambivalently Psychologized
Model of Progress
Although Kuhn’s position on truth may in some ways
respond to divisions in psychology, his model of progress
may have actually contributed to these divisions because he
presented a mixed message in Structure about psychology.
Kuhn used psychology as an example of a pre-paradigmatic
science (to be compared with paradigmatic sciences such as
physics)—that is, lower on a sort of growth chart. How-
ever, he also indirectly validated psychology as a science
by using it as the basis of his model.
Kuhn (1970a) stated that psychology and sociology
were “weak reeds from which to weave a philosophy of
science” (p. 235). Why? Because he formulated the ideas
for Structure precisely because he noticed so much discus-
sion about what constitutes a legitimate science among
social scientists. He explained that before writing the
monograph, he spent a year in “a community composed
predominantly of social scientists” (Kuhn, 1970b, pp. vii–
viii) and that this
confronted me with unanticipated problems about the differences
between such communities and those of the natural scientists
among whom I had been trained....Iwasstruck by the number
and extent of the overt disagreements between the social scientists
about the nature of legitimate scientific problems and methods.
(Kuhn, 1970b, p. viii)
This comparison led him to suggest that before a field
becomes paradigmatic, it is characterized by “frequent and
deep debates over legitimate methods, problems, and stan-
dards of solutions, though these serve rather to define
schools than to produce agreement” (Kuhn, 1970b, pp.
47–48). He believed social scientists have a tendency “to
defend their choice of a research problem...chieflyin
terms of the social importance of achieving a solution” and
asked, when compared with natural scientists, “Which
group would one then expect to solve problems at a more
rapid rate” (Kuhn, 1970b, p. 164)?
However, Jerome Bruner, long a friend of Kuhn,
wrote that Kuhn was
not anti-psychology, only rather bored with psychologists gener-
ally who, on the whole, he thought were not serious about much
other than playing safe....Ifhehadaspecific complaint about
the social sciences, it was not that they were not “advanced” but
that they somehow lacked a sense of how they were going about
their enterprises. (J. Bruner, personal communication, November
11, 1997, p. 1)
Kuhn himself diplomatically communicated to O’Donohue
(1993) that in terms of its status as a science, “psychology
is probably too much of a catchall field to generalize about”
(p. 282)—perhaps because it includes elements of both
natural and social sciences. Regardless, Kuhn used the
output of this catchall field as the basis of his theory.
The extent to which Kuhn deliberately built his theory
around psychological theory seems to have gone largely
unrecognized in the history and philosophy of science
literatures. In Structure, Kuhn described change in science
as a process of individual psychological development. He
did so (a) by arguing that revolutionary change in science
requires a gestalt switch and (b) by suggesting that scien-
tific paradigms develop in normative, Piagetian-like stages.
Kuhn was strongly challenged on these two points—both
of which, he later acknowledged, resulted in much confu-
sion—before the manuscript was published, as revealed in
personal letters between Kuhn and his mentor, James Bry-
ant Conant.
2
The fact that Kuhn chose to push forward with
these points in the face of such a challenge highlights the
degree to which he felt they were important to his theory.
Detailing the extent to which Kuhn deliberately presented
a provocatively psychologized model of progress helps to
explain the appeal Structure has to psychologists and the
confusion that is reflected in their referencing of it.
Gestalt Switches: The Problem of Using
Individuals as a Stand-in for Groups
Piaget’s (1929) theory of the assimilation and accommo-
dation of anomalous information and the New Look work
in perception together form the basis of Kuhn’s central
tenet—that what scientists discover is limited by what they
see. Kuhn (1970b) wrote in the preface to Structure that a
“footnote encountered by chance” led him to Piaget’s ex-
periments of children’s developmental transitions from one
“world” to another and that he was struck by this work
because it “displayed concepts and processes that also
2
On April 22, 1961, Kuhn sent Conant, then president of Harvard
University, a draft of the Structure manuscript with a letter inviting
criticism and making an appeal for Conant’s endorsement to a publisher.
Conant replied in full on June 5th, outlining several extensive criticisms
of the text. When Kuhn replied, he wrote that some of Conant’s comments
“reflect fundamental disagreements; others reflect misunderstandings that
have not arisen with other readers and whose source I cannot locate; a few
I simply cannot understand” (T. S. Kuhn, letter to J. B. Conant, June 29,
1961, p. 1). Importantly, he said that to the extent that there were
fundamental disagreements, he was not persuaded to make changes and
that he was sure that Conant would feel displeased with the final manu-
script, a fact which “will make me quite sad” (T. S. Kuhn, letter to J. B.
Conant, June 29, 1961, p. 1). As can be gleaned from the published book
and their correspondence, Kuhn did not substantively modify the final
manuscript in concurrence with Conant’s views. The correspondence,
however, did not end on a disagreeable note. There is a letter from Conant
missing from the Archives (July 11, 1961) that was mentioned by Kuhn
in a subsequent reply; Kuhn said that he was much appreciative of
Conant’s “kind” letter, thanked him for “writing so nice a ‘period’ to the
present exchange,” and asked to dedicate the book to him, saying, “you
are the one who taught me that the turtle always travels fastest when his
neck is out” (T. S. Kuhn, letter to J. B. Conant, August 5, 1961, p. 1). (The
Kuhn–Conant letters are preserved in the Harvard Archives, UAI 15.898,
Box 131, K Personal File in N.Y., Personal Letters.)
272 April 2003
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American Psychologist
emerge directly from the history of science” (p. vi). He also
told a group of child psychologists that since he had dis-
covered history of science and Piaget, “the two have inter-
acted closely in my mind and in my work. Part of what I
know about how to ask questions of dead scientists has
been learned by examining Piaget’s interrogations of living
children” (Kuhn, 1977a, p. 21). Kuhn (1970b) said all
scientific discoveries reveal a process of psychological
transformation very akin to Piaget’s description of chil-
dren’s assimilation and accommodation of concepts,
namely, “the previous awareness of anomaly, the gradual
and simultaneous emergence of both observational and
conceptual recognition, and the consequent change of par-
adigm categories and procedures often accompanied by
resistance” (p. 62; see also Kuhn’s [1973] essay in Henle,
Jaynes, & Sullivan’s [1973] Historical Conceptions of
Psychology).
Kuhn described a Bruner and Postman (1949) exper-
iment in Structure and wrote, “Either as a metaphor or
because it reflects the nature of the mind, that psycholog-
ical experiment provides a wonderfully simple and cogent
schema for the process of scientific discovery” (Kuhn,
1970b, p. 64). Similarly, he used psychological studies to
show how previously held paradigms form the basis of a
worldview that can be completely transformed:
An experimental subject who puts on goggles fitted with inverting
lenses initially sees the entire world upside down...and the
result is extreme disorientation, an acute personal crisis. But after
the subject has begun to learn to deal with his new world, his
entire visual field flipsover....Literally as well as metaphori-
cally, the man accustomed to inverting lenses has undergone a
revolutionary transformation of vision. (Kuhn, 1970b, p. 112)
He concluded that
Surveying the rich experimental literature from which these ex-
amples are drawn makes one suspect that something like a para-
digm is prerequisite to perception itself. What a man sees depends
both upon what he looks at and also what his previous visual-
conceptual experience has taught him to see. In the absence of
such training there can only be, in William James’s phrase, “a
blooming buzzin’ confusion.” (Kuhn, 1970b, p. 113)
Conant, though, recommended eliminating Kuhn’s
discussion of the perceptual process as unnecessary to the
argument:
I don’t think it is what people see—that matters. What matters is
the guide to action which they accept. Passive seeing proves
nothing. I don’t think “scientific perception” is a happy phrase...
action is necessary. It is even in the psychological experiments
which have so deeply impressed you. I think this whole section of
your document complicates your fundamental argument. (J. B.
Conant, letter to T. S. Kuhn, June 5, 1961, p. 3).
Kuhn countered in his reply to Conant that what he
was describing was not passive seeing; his argument is that
there is no such thing as an objective point of view:
Most of my argument is intended to indicate that there is no such
thing, even as an ideal. It is just because my psychological
experiments point in that direction—towards the role of what you
call guides to action—that I use them. (T. S. Kuhn, letter to J. B.
Conant, June 29, 1961, p. 5)
Kuhn maintained that he must include this portion of the
argument because he found “it necessary to deny the exis-
tence of the process [objective perception] except as a
possible construct from within a given world view” (T. S.
Kuhn, letter to J. B. Conant, June 29, 1961, p. 6). Kuhn
said,
I would like you to see why the material is in there and also why
I cannot view it as a mere complication in my fundamental
argument. On the contrary, from my viewpoint the section on
perception is the fundamental one in the monograph [italics
added]. (T. S. Kuhn, letter to J. B. Conant, June 29, 1961, p. 6)
Some of psychologists’ Kuhn referencing follows di-
rectly from this part of his argument. These psychologists
see Kuhn’s statements about changes in sciences as inform-
ing how they think about the development of individuals.
For example, Arca (1984) wrote that biological systems (in
particular, the biological and cognitive development of
children), like sciences, are characterized by periods of
slow drift punctuated by revolutions: “There are apparently
deep correspondences between the few basic strategies
used in humans’ evolving scientific knowledge to interpret
changes, and the few deep strategies which shape the
explicit development of individuals’ thinking” (p. 339).
Similarly, Andersen, Barker, and Chen (1996) argued that
Kuhn’s account has been independently supported by re-
cent research in cognitive psychology—in that changes in
knowledge structures such as categories and exemplars
occur in people the way that Kuhn, especially later in life,
said they did in scientific structures. They also claimed that
these “parallel accounts of concepts found in Kuhn and
cognitive science lead to a new understanding of the nature
of normal science, of the transition from normal science to
crisis, and of scientific revolutions” (Chen, Anderson &
Barker, 1998, p. 5).
These psychologists and others (e.g., Gibson, 1984;
Jiang, 1998; Khalidi, 1998) have, like Kuhn, found this sort
of “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny” notion a compelling
one. Indeed, psychologists are not alone in finding Kuhn’s
model of progress worthy of appropriation. Stephen J.
Gould (1997), for example, suggested that something very
like Kuhn’s theory underlies, and perhaps was part catalyst
for, modern views of progress across scientific fields, that
the incorporation and validation of the nonaccumulation
view of change has had an immense impact on the practice
of science generally. In fact, Gould stated that the ideas in
Structure influenced the formulation of his own widely
popular theory of punctuated equilibrium.
However, Conant’s objection to this part of Kuhn’s
argument was prescient. The leap from the individual to the
group has been much criticized—and justly, as Kuhn him-
self noted with decades’ worth of hindsight:
In Structure the argument repeatedly moves back and forth be-
tween generalizations about individuals and generalizations about
groups, apparently taking for granted that the same concepts are
applicable to both, that a group is somehow an individual writ
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American Psychologist
large...that use now seems to me mistaken. Groups do not have
experiences except insofar as all their members do. And there are
no experiences...that all the members of a scientific community
must share in the course of a revolution....Infact, like other
visual experiences, gestalt switches happen to individuals, and
there is ample evidence that some members of a scientific com-
munity have such experiences during a revolution. But in Struc-
ture the gestalt switch is repeatedly used also as a model for what
happens to a group. (Kuhn, 1993, p. xiii)
This leap is not just problematic logically. It contributes to
a sense of confusion about how to assess progress.
Paradigmatic Stages: The Problem of Mixing
Description With Prescription
Conant also found fault with Kuhn’s emphasis on the
development of paradigms and paradigm shifts as key
indicators of progress in a field. He first criticized the “use
(and abuse) of a word you seem to have fallen in love
with!” and “which is used so often in subsequent pages that
[the reader] is ready to cry out in pain” (J. B. Conant, letter
to T. S. Kuhn, June 5, 1961, pp. 1–2). On this point, Conant
concluded, “I believe you dodge some of the difficulties of
the detailed analysis of the application of your doctrines by
taking refuge in the word ‘paradigm’” (J. B. Conant, letter
to T. S. Kuhn, June 5, 1961, p. 3), and suggested replacing
paradigm with theory. Conant also stated, “The difficulty
with your treatment is that you focus attention on a few
major scientific revolutions and by implications, at least,
carry over to minor revolutions all that you say about the
major ones” (J. B. Conant, letter to T. S. Kuhn, June 5,
1961, p. 2). He went on to say, “I like your distinction
between an immature and mature science but I should not
like to call the first period pre-paradigmatic” (J. B. Conant,
letter to T. S. Kuhn, June 5, 1961, p. 2)! He pointed out that
Kuhn’s terms and arguments ignored incremental ad-
vances, making identification of progress very difficult:
“By leaving out any reference to technology and advances
in the practical arts (including the practical art of experi-
ment and observation) you distort the picture of science and
get yourself into needless trouble about progress” (J. B.
Conant, letter to T. S. Kuhn, June 5, 1961, p. 3). In his letter
back to Conant, Kuhn said that he would clarify his use of
the word paradigm but that he believed it was being used in
a proper way (T. S. Kuhn, letter to J. B. Conant, June 29,
1961, p. 2).
3
However, he maintained that his emphasis on
revolutions, rather than incremental advances, was not at
all “needless trouble about progress” because “progress is
easy to define and evaluate only for a cumulative process,”
and he disagreed that “cumulativeness is the distinguishing
feature of science” (T. S. Kuhn, letter to J. B. Conant, June
29, 1961, p. 5).
Kuhn has, then, overtly described scientific progress
in terms of developmental stages—pre-paradigmatic, par-
adigmatic, crisis and revolution, and then a new paradigm
(others have also described Kuhn’s model as a stage theory;
e.g., Leahey, 1992, and Giere, 1999).
4
Stages represent
categorical designations. Conant seems to have been sug-
gesting a continuum instead. Kuhn, by failing to give
significance to minor changes that come from solutions to
practical problems and to acknowledge that a completely
shared paradigm may not be a requisite for progress, cre-
ated a dichotomy. In spite of the fact that he said these
stages did not signify progress and in spite of the fact that
he later clarified these points (see, e.g., Kuhn, 2000, p.
307), in Structure he is presenting a normative model,
using characteristics of stages to signal a field as either
paradigmatic or not, capable of revolutionary change or
not. Whether he intended it to or not, highlighting stages
generates hullabaloo. The designation of being at an earlier
stage is pejorative; it is rarely preferable to be part of an
enterprise that is immature, slow, pre-paradigmatic, or
amorphous relative to others that are mature, advanced,
paradigmatic, and cohesive. These are not just abstract
concerns—the perception of a field as an evolving science,
capable of generating solutions to well-articulated prob-
lems, yields very real resources, such as funding and in-
terest on the part of bright students.
Not surprisingly, then, the most substantive form of
Kuhn referencing by psychologists is to use the ideas in
Structure to size up the field, to figure out where psychol-
ogy is and where it ought to be. The prototype for this form
of usage is to describe the history of psychology in Kuh-
nian terms and then to assess the field’s current status as a
science. The conclusions vary—some maintain that psy-
chology is not a science, some that it is an immature
science, and some that it is a bona fide paradigmatic sci-
ence. This variance seems to come from practitioners being
on different sides of the fault lines in the field, as well as
from Kuhn’s reliance on psychology and the imprecision in
the text that he later acknowledged.
For example, Segal and Lachman (1972) argued that
there was an identifiable paradigm in psychology between
1930 and 1960, “known variously as behavior theory,
learning theory, neobehaviorism, or S-R psychology,” and
that changes in this area are “changes in an established
science rather than preparadigmatic variation” (p. 46),
which led them to speculate that the field at the time of
writing was in the midst of a scientific revolution. This
position was soundly criticized, however, as ethnocentric
and based on cavalier usage of Kuhn, such that a more
appropriate reading of the field “indicate[s] the multi-par-
adigmatic nature of psychology...not [a] mature, one-
paradigm-at-a-time science” (Warren, 1972, p. 1196). Al-
though there are some authors who have rejected the value
3
Having come under attack for the plasticity of the word paradigm
in his monograph, Kuhn subsequently acknowledged that it was used too
broadly (Kuhn, 1977b; see also a relevant story in Kuhn, 2000, pp.
299–300).
4
Not surprisingly, Kuhn’s stage model of scientific progress is very
much like Piaget’s (1929) stage model of development. Piaget believed
that children had to progress through developmental stages sequentially,
with no skipping from Stage 1 to Stage 3, for example, and that there were
clear characteristics that defined these stages. Perhaps not coincidentally,
one introductory psychology text said, by way of explaining the current
research that has found Piaget wrong on this count, “Our thinking may
advance more because of our gradually increasing store of knowledge and
ability to manipulate that knowledge efficiently than because of funda-
mental revolutions in our way of thinking” (Gray, 1999, p. 413).
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American Psychologist
of Kuhn applied to assessments of psychology’s status as a
science, saying either that Kuhn’s model is fundamentally
flawed (Suppe, 1984) or that other models of progress are
more accurate (Gholson & Barker, 1985), he is widely used
as an authority in these debates.
Several American Psychologist articles and the com-
ments elicited by those articles illustrate that these debates
are extensive and mainstream. Leahey (1992) noted that the
“history of experimental psychology in America is typi-
cally told as a series of two Kuhnian revolutions separating
three periods of normal science dominated by the mentalist,
then behaviorist, and finally today’s cognitivist paradigm”
(p. 308) but that the evidence is in favor of nonrevolution-
ary change, so that if Kuhn is assumed to be right (an
assumption Leahey did not make), it can be concluded that
“psychology is not a science, because it has had no normal
science and hence no revolutions” (p. 316; see also Brisk-
man, 1972; Buss, 1978; Palermo, 1971; Peterson, 1981;
Walter & Palermo, 1973). Friman, Allen, Kerwin, and
Larzelere (1993) came to the conclusion that a scientific
revolution, with cognitive psychology replacing behavior-
ism and psychoanalysis, indeed had not occurred. Robins
and Craik (1994) argued, however, that examination of the
preeminent journals in psychology indicated an ascendancy
of cognitive psychology that just might “usher in the long-
awaited paradigmatic state of scientific psychology” (p.
816). Sperry (1993) argued more strongly for the cognitive
revolution as a paradigm shift, and again there was a
backlash of disagreement with this psychology-truly-is-a-
science position (Hergenhahn, 1994; Holdstock, 1994;
Morf, 1994). Staats (1991) maintained that psychology is
not a science because it has always lacked a unified para-
digm, that it is in a crisis of increasingly unmanageable
fragmentation, and that the field “must achieve compact,
parsimonious, interrelated, and consensual knowledge to be
considered to be a real science” (p. 910; see Ardila, 1992,
and Kirsh, 1977, for similar arguments). In response, S. M.
Schneider (1992) suggested that the degree of integration is
not so dire, Kukla (1992) that unification may not be such
a clear recipe for improvement, and McNally (1992) that an
understanding of Kuhn’s more recent work indicates that
diversity in the field may signify vitality, not disintegration.
Similarly, an introductory psychology text stated,
“Though there are no longer separate schools of psychol-
ogy with charismatic leaders and loyal followers, psychol-
ogy still lacks a unifying scientific paradigm to which most
psychologists subscribe” (Sdorow, 1990, p. 14). However,
Henley, Johnson, Jones, and Herzog (1989) examined 233
introductory or general psychology textbooks published
between 1887 and 1987 and found that definitions of psy-
chology were predominately mental, then behavioral, and
then cognitive, which they interpreted as signaling para-
digms and paradigm shifts.
There is, of course, not a clear answer to the question
of whether or not psychology is a science. More accurately,
the answer depends on where one draws lines around the
term psychology, around the term science, and around
Kuhn’s terms. What is clear from this usage of Kuhn is that
the status of the field matters to psychologists.
Similarly, the status of one’s own work also matters to
psychologists. This can be seen in another common form of
Kuhn referencing, what may be best described as use for
rhetorical leverage. It is this form of usage that is probably
most responsible for the point of view opening this article,
that psychologists’ Kuhn referencing is superficial, uncrit-
ical, and misinformed. It is easy to see why this is the
impression formed by critics.
Coleman and Salamon (1988) analyzed the 652 arti-
cles that cited Structure published in psychology journals
between 1969 and 1983 and found that nearly half (48%) of
the content-categorized comments reflected superficial us-
age of Kuhnian terms. Only 3% of the 652 were strictly
about Kuhn or an application of Kuhn’s ideas. Of the 163
articles with coverage extensive enough for favorability
ratings, 92% to 96% over the 15-year period were rated as
being in “Total Agreement” with Kuhn’s theory. In addi-
tion, they found that psychologists tended to cite the 1962
edition of Structure rather than the less inflammatory 1970
edition. They concluded that Kuhn use has been chrono-
logically stable, largely favorable, more frequent than any
other philosopher of science, and generally superficial,
5
and that it originates “in the impulse to magnify the sig-
nificance of the author’s findings, conclusions, or reflec-
tions” (Coleman & Salamon, 1988, pp. 435–436).
The following five examples, at first blush, seem to
support that view. They illustrate what is meant by rhetoric
leverage, and they show that such usage crosses a range of
subdisciplines. (a) “These lectures review the current state
of the art in brain research to show that several lines of
inquiry have been converging to produce a paradigm
shift...inourunderstanding of the neural basis of figural
perception” (Pribram, 1991, p. xxix). (b) “This article con-
tends that changes are occurring so rapidly in innovative
organizations that Kuhnian notions of ‘scientific revolu-
tions’ do not adequately describe this phenomenon” (Sha-
reef, 1997, p. 655). (c) “Most of the phenomena Kuhn has
associated with paradigm shift can be observed in the
emergence of self-psychology” (Galatzer-Levy, 1988, p.
4). (d) “In the past 25 years, a radically new understanding
of Deaf people has appeared. This new understanding
constitutes what Kuhn called a paradigm shift” (Glickman,
1996, p. 1). (e) “Connectionism as a method of modeling
cognition as the interaction of neuronlike units...may
represent a paradigm shift for psychology” (W. Schneider,
1988, p. 73).
Each of these examples (and there are many others)
invokes language from Structure to report progress that has
5
To extend Coleman and Salamon’s (1988) findings, I counted the
number of citations in psychology journals from 1984 to 2001 in the
Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), using the SSCI list of psychology
journals. Adding that number (1,164) to Coleman and Salamon’s count
from 1969–1983 (652) and dividing the total by 33 (the number of years
covered) gives an average number of citations per year of 55, as men-
tioned in the sentence opening this article. In keeping with Coleman and
Salamon’s findings, the average number of citations is fairly steady; it has
not decreased linearly over the years. A spreadsheet of the citations and a
table of number of citations per year are available on request.
275April 2003
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American Psychologist
occurred in particular research areas. These works no doubt
represent valuable contributions, but they illustrate a ten-
dency to overextend Kuhn’s argument and a failure to
grasp the subtleties of Kuhn’s model of progress. For
example, revolutions are meant to signify shifts in the field
as a whole, not in niche areas. Is it, however, fair to
designate such usage, as Coleman and Salamon (1988) and
others have, as purely and intentionally sophistic?
Kuhn’s position on truth and his model of progress
reframe the admirable in science. If truth is not absolute,
knowledge does not accumulate. Thus, success can no
longer be adequately measured by finding fitting solutions
to focused problems (this is Conant’s point about ignoring
minor advances). Use for rhetorical leverage shows that
psychologists look for and are willing to wave what they
believe are Kuhnian signs of the admirable—revolutions
and paradigm shifts—when it is more likely that their
results signify minor advances. However, it is easy for
critics to miss the fact that such usage, and the pervasive-
ness of this usage, may originate from a deeply held desire
for psychology, and for psychologists, to be admirable.
Summary and Conclusions
I have argued that Kuhn’s position on truth and his psy-
chologized model of scientific progress have made Struc-
ture an especially appealing resource for psychologists and
that the nature of this appeal can be seen in the ways
psychologists reference Kuhn. A key piece of this argu-
ment is the proposition that psychologists study phenomena
that are inherently multileveled, that require both natural
and social levels of analysis (by phenomena, I am referring
to broad terms or classes—e.g., learning, schizophrenia,
emotion, consciousness, etc.). This means that the field
necessarily encompasses contradictory traditions, assump-
tions, and methods and accordingly that psychology has
consistently been perceived from within and without as
splintered, in a state of crisis.
I have also argued that Kuhn’s naturalistic position on
scientific truth may hold an implicit appeal to psychologists
because it bridges these divisions, falling between a natu-
ral/rationalist stance and a social/relativist stance. How-
ever, it is Kuhn’s model of scientific progress that seems to
have held the greatest explicit appeal. Kuhn’s model of
progress relies on psychology, and it presents a point of
view that seems normative; it can be read to say something
akin to the following: A science is like a person, with
identifiable stages of development. So, when one has a
collection of scientists who are attuned to signs of devel-
opmental progress (because they are divided) and a popular
text that seems to identify stages of development, one gets
frequent referencing to assess the developmental status of
the field and to laud individual development.
In some ways, the above-told history of mutual influ-
ence—Kuhn’s use of psychology and psychologists’ per-
vasive referencing of Kuhn—highlights that of which psy-
chologists are all too acutely aware: The field lacks an
enduring scientific identity. It also, though, highlights that,
in general, psychologists seem far more concerned with
what signifies comparative progress than with generating or
maintaining a vision for where the field is going. To use the
terms from a quotation earlier in this article, if psychol-
ogy’s “dozens of characters in search of a play” want to
produce something other than a “tumble of programs,
promises, and proclamations,” there would be some benefit
to attending to “what it is, as we say, ‘about’—what sort of
knowledge, of what sort of reality, to what sort of end”
(Geertz, 2000, pp. 187–188).
To what sort of end? Two norms seem to me to be
especially contradictory in light of the overarching or long-
term goals suggested by the above analysis. First, suppose
that psychologists really do want to understand phenomena
that cross levels of analysis, that require more molecular,
natural science methods as well as more molar, social
levels of analysis. It would seem that to do so would
require a value placed on synthesis, meta-analytic perspec-
tive, and cross-area expertise. Why, then, in practice, are
history of psychology and philosophy of science relatively
undervalued and breadth so routinely sacrificed in favor of
specialization? Second, suppose that psychologists tend to
favor a Kuhn-like, naturalistic, middling stance on truth in
science—to believe that there is truth without claiming that
results are not historically, culturally, and psychologically
limited. Why, then, is there such a strong norm for using
language of justification in journals and grants instead of an
explicit acknowledgment that such products (like this one)
are not truth but instead represent works in progress, as
surely they all must?
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