Re: Thomas Kuhn & The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

[HALL Bill <hallb -at- TENIX -dot- COM>]

In the last few days there have been some rather off-handed remarks about
the relevance of Kuhn's idea to technical writing and technical publishing.
Although a number Kuhn's peers criticised how his ideas were presented (long
story, deleted), every technical writer could benefit from understanding his
analysis of the difficulties in communicating rationally between different
disciplines or even different 'schools' within the one discipline (e.g.,
computer programmers vs computer users).

I learned the fundamental value and importance of Kuhn's work to a writer
the hard way.  In my early writing career (as a post-doctoral academic
trying to publish my thesis work in evolutionary biology ), I ended up
spending more than a year researching the theory of knowledge
(epistemology), trying to understand why reviewers didn't understand my
papers.  The thesis itself went through a number of drafts, with useful
comments from my thesis adviser like "I don't like it, do it over"!  I
eventually got my degree through the sheer volume of evidence backing my
case, but my problems with reviewers continued, without any of them
satisfactorily explaining what they didn't like about my papers.

The fundamental nature of the problem (but not the solution) finally became
clear when a graduate student, who had been my field assistant for a lot of
the research, provided the crucial clues.  His thesis (at another
university) was a spin-off from my own thesis, but he also had been carping
to me about how bad my writing was.  In exasperation, I finally told him to
either shut up or be specific and rewrite the paper the way he thought it
should be written.  Basically, he ended up telling me that my work was
'unscientific', and his detailed review and markup proved to me that he had
totally failed to understand what I had believed was an obvious and
fundamental research paradigm that I consciously followed for the whole
research program (only at this time neither of us had a clue that there were
actually things like paradigms).  I had no choice but to go back to
fundamentals that most American scientists have never been taught or think
about:  What is science? and What do we know when we think we know
something?

As I said at the outset, it took me over a year of quite heavy duty research
and reading to really understand the hole I had fallen into.  I eventually
answered by questions, but by then it had taken so long that I never got
back into the tenure track.  I also discovered personal computing and
started a WP and technical writing bureau to pay for the interest, so I was
lost to evolutionary biology.

(My particular communication problem was that I had deliberately organised
my research following the 'comparative approach', implicitly taught in
comparative anatomy;  whereas my reviewers were expecting the work to be
organised according to the 'hypothetico-deductive approach', blindly adopted
from the physical sciences.)

Getting back to the point:  95% of what I read in researching the problem
was academic wank.  Only two thinkers had much useful to say on my writing
problems or whether I was doing good science:  Karl Popper (a pure
philosopher who didn't actually know much about science) - who provided very
clear and justifiable criteria for differentiating between good
science/rational knowledge and bad science/irrationality, and Thomas Kuhn
(primarily an historian) - who provided a clear insight as to why science
does not always proceed rationally.

Although I hesitate to use the word, Kuhn's work is all about paradigms.
(One of Kuhn's critics claimed that 'paradigm' was used with at least 27
different meanings in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions!)  However, as
I understand and have generalised the concept, a person's (or discipline's)
paradigm is the totality of tacit and a priori understandings of terminology
(word definitions), examples of what is considered to be good science
(practice), etc. - which are rarely or never actually thought about
consciously on one's daily work.  Everything a person reads or hears is
unconsciously filtered through, interpreted and reflected against the
personal or discipline paradigm before it can be evaluated & worked with
within the person's consciousness.  What is logical or obvious in one
paradigm may appear to be completely irrational by the time it is filtered
into a different paradigm.  The problem is probably best understood in
foreign language translation, where we understand easily that cognate words
don't necessarily carry the same denotations and connotations in the other
language.  However, it applies equally, but much more insidiously, to all
technical writing that involves cross disciplinary communication where
people believe they are using the same language.

As technical writers, before we can effectively communicate to the users of
our documentation, we must both truly understand their personal paradigm(s)
and the paradigm(s) used by the original authors of the information we are
trying to communicate.  Although both would claim to speak English, for
example, the chasm between programmers and users is huge!  To bridge such
chasms successfully, it helps to understand what it is we have to bridge.
Basically, besides communicating the obvious, we have to both explain (1)
that a fundamental communication problem exists, and (2) make tangible and
explicit those differences between the paradigms which would otherwise be
tacit and implicit.

I could go on - but with these clues, I would only be repeating what should
be readily understandable from Kuhn's book.

On another tack, differences in paradigms also account for the major
difficulties many of us have trying to explain & sell the obvious(?)
advantages to higher management of structured authoring systems (e.g.,
FrameMaker) vs word processing (e.g., MS Word) - a debate I have added my 2
cents to on this forum, much to the disgust of some members.

If anyone wishes to contact me directly on this subject, I would be happy to
email a copy of the PowerPoint presentation I gave at the SGML/XML Asia
Pacific Conference in Sydney last year, on the value of understanding Thomas
Kuhn in dealing with such management issues: "When a good business case
alone isn't enough to get SGML into your corporate strategy".  However,
given that I am currently flat-out organising the implementation of our SGML
system, I I'm not likely to have time for any extended replies on Kuhn (or
Popper).

Regards,

Bill Hall
Documentation Systems Specialist
Integrated Logistic Support
Tenix Defence Systems Pty Ltd
Williamstown, Vic. 3016 AUSTRALIA
Phone:  +61 3 9244 4170
Email:  hallb -at- tenix -dot- com


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