Open Journal of Philosophy 2013. Vol.3, No.2, 351-357 Published Online May 2013 in SciRes (http://www.scirp.org/journal/ojpp) http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/ojpp.2013.32053 Copyright © 2013 SciRes. 351 Scientific Prediction in the Beginning of the “Historical Turn”: Stephen Toulmin and Thomas Kuhn Wenceslao J. Gonzalez Department of Humanities, University of A Coruña, Spain Email: wencglez@udc.e s Received January 14th, 2013; revised February 17th, 2013; accepted March 2nd, 2013 Copyright © 2013 Wenceslao J. Gonzalez. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Com- mons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, pro- vided the original work is properly cited. This paper considers the similarities and differences between Toulmin and Kuhn on the problem of pre- diction. The context of the analysis is the beginning of the “historical turn” in philosophy of science (i.e., the period before the 1965 international colloquium held at Bedford College). The comparison between these authors takes into account several levels: semantic, logical, epistemological, methodological, onto- logical, and axiological. The main goal is to analyze whether there are influences of Toulmin in Kuhn re- garding scientific prediction or, at least, if the former reached similar positions to the latter on the issue of the role of prediction in science. Keywords: Toulmin; Kuhn; Scientific Prediction; Historical Turn; Similarities; Differences Historical Context The “historical turn” in the philosophy and methodology of science is commonly attributed to Thomas Kuhn and Imre La- katos. In addition, there are contemporary authors, such as Paul Feyerabend, and later thinkers, such as Larry Laudan, who developed a view on philosophy of science based on the con- tributions of history of science. Before the “historical turn” was well established, some specialists made analyses in favor of this historiographic dimension: on the one hand, is the case of Ludwik Fleck, who passed almost unknown in the mid-thir- ties;1 and, on the other hand, is the case of Norwood Russell Hanson and Stephen Toulmin, who were more influential but did not get the “turn” that Kuhn achieved later on. Stephen Toulmin and Thomas Kuhn: Some Similarities Toulmin has some similarities with the author of The Struc- ture of Scientific Revolutions (Kuhn, [1962b], 1970a). (i) In Philosophy of Science (Toulmin, 1953) and in Foresight and Understanding (Toulmin, 1961) he emphasizes the role of lan- guage in science. Toulmin receives the direct influence of Ludwig Wittgenstein, a thinker who also has repercussions in Kuhn’s approach (mainly in his pragmatic view of the meaning of scientific terms). (ii) They agree that the structure of scien- tific theories is no longer a logical structure of the kind ac- cepted by the logical positivists (or even by Karl Popper). (iii) For Toulmin and Kuhn, epistemological factors are not a con- struction like a building (from foundations on) but rather a dynamic interaction with the social environment or historical context. (iv) Methodologically, both thinkers take into account the role of prediction as a guarantee of the validity of scientific knowledge. (v) Ontologically, they see science as a human activity rather than as an abstract amount of impersonal knowledge. (vi) Axiologically, they recognize the importance of the aim of scientific prediction, although they do not con- sider it from a predictivist approach (like Hans Reichenbach did in 1938 with Experience and Prediction), (cf. Reichenbach, 1938; see Gonzalez, 1995: pp. 35-56). Within this historic-systematic context, the paper pays atten- tion to the similarities and differences between Toulmin and Kuhn on the problem of prediction. The comparison takes into account the levels pointed out: semantic, logical, epistemologi- cal, methodological, ontological, and axiological. The analysis will focus on the beginning of the “historical turn,” i.e., the period before the 1965 international colloquium in philosophy of science held at Bedford College. The main goal is to analyze whether there are influences of Toulmin on Kuhn regarding scientific prediction or, at least, if the former reached similar positions to the latter on the issue of the role of prediction in science. A Comparative Analysis on Prediction: Toulmin and Kuhn In 1961 Toulmin emphasized the connection between history of science and philosophy of science.2 He wrote: “the critical questions which a philosopher brings to science need to be co-ordinated with the factual studies of history.”3 This was written before Kuhn’s historiographic book was published, 2 “My debts to the working historians of science are so obvious as not to require detailed acknowledgme n t,” Toulmin (196 1) , p. 5. 3 Toulmin (196 1), p. 16. “I have aimed (...) at sh owing the fascinating prob- lems that arise when one brings logical and philosophical questions to bear on the history of our scientific ideas,” Foresight and understanding:An inquiry into the aims of science, p. 94. 1 An interesting comparison between Fleck’s views and Kuhn’s approach is in Mößner (2 011), pp. 36 2-371.
W. J. GONZALEZ where he defends a key role for history of science, which leads to the philosophic-methodological categories of “normal sci- ence” and “scientific revolution.”4 Semantics of Prediction According to Toulmin, “words like ‘prediction’ (...) conceal hidden ambiguities” (Toulmin, 1961: p. 16). Moreover, he makes explicit that, in his judgment, “the word ‘prediction’ is in fact a very slippery one. It slides between two extreme uses: one naive, the other sophisticated. In its most obvious and ap- pealing sense, explaining and predicting are emphatically not all-of-a-piece; but, by hedging the term around with sufficient qualifications, we can at least use it to provide a definition of explanation” (Toulmin, 1961: p. 23). Initially, following the Wittgensteinian influence — a prag- matic account on language —, Toulmin considers that the terms such as “prediction” or “predictive” can be understood in the familiar, non-philosophical sense. This means that there are “pre-dictions, fore-tellings, say ings-in-advance” (Toulmin, 1961: p. 24). In addition, he does not distinguish between “foresight,” “prediction,” and “forecasting,” which — in my judgment — should be done in order to analyze the foretellings in terms of the different degree of control of the variables. This possibility is more relevant in economics than in other sciences (cf. Gon- zalez, 1996b: pp. 201-228; especially, pp. 215-216). But Toulmin embraces de facto another position: prediction as testable implication. This involves “the ability to infer the occurrence of any event in question — whether it has already happened, is happening now, or is going to happen in the fu- ture” (Toulmin, 1961: p. 27). Thus, the distinction between “pre-diction” (saying beforehand that something is going to happen) and “retro-diction” (inferring after the event it has happened) is diluted. This seems to me a mistake, insofar as the future is epistemologically and ontologically related to some- thing with a wide range of possibilities, which is far wider — and, eventually, more complex — than the past. On analyzing Toulmin’s texts it seems that his semantics of science includes three different uses of predictions: a) future phenomena that are already confirmed, due to some kinds of laws (e.g., eclipses); b) future events not yet confirmed that are themselves still in the future (Toulmin, 1961: p. 26); and c) past things to be discovered (e.g., in paleontology), (cf. Toulmin, 1961: pp. 26-27). Therefore, he offers us a very confused no- tion of “prediction:” ‘predictive success’ can “cover inferences about events at any time — past, present, or future — whether we eventually observe the event itself or only its after-effects” (Toulmin, 1961: p. 27). Kuhn initially uses “prediction” with the common meaning of something said in advance, be the novelty “expected” or “unexpected” (cf. Kuhn, [1962b], 1970a: p. 35). Thus, it is connected to the idea of “anticipation” rather than to looking back: prediction means — in principle — “foreknowledge,”5 which makes a genuine “retrodiction” really hard. But, to a large extent, it is a “contextual meaning:” prediction depends on a content that vies for the allegiance of the scientific com- munity,6 within a paradigm that it is historically supported and can be changed any time. This is one of the roots of Kuhn’s relativism of his initial philosophic-methodological period.7 Another semantic distinction in Kuhn, that has epistemo- logical and methodological consequences, is the difference between “quantitative predictions” and “qualitative predic- tions.” This distinction is reinforced in Postscript-1969, where he gives more relevance to the former than to the latter: “quan- titative predictions are preferable to qualitative ones” (Kuhn, 1970b: p. 185). Previously, he has pointed out that quantitative predictions have had a key role in history of science, such as in Newton’s success in predicting astronomical observations (cf. Kuhn, [1962b], 1970a: p. 154) or in the acceptance of Ein- stein’s general theory of relativity.8 The Structure of Scientific Theories and Prediction From a structural point of view, Toulmin considers that sci- entific theories can have different orientations: “science is cer- tainly not a matter of forecasting alone, since we also have to discover explanatory connections between the happening we predict” (Toulmin, 1961: p. 16). Thus, he criticizes vehemently the predictivist thesis9 (i.e., an instrumentalism on prediction), maybe because he held it before Foresight and Understanding. In this book, he rejects that the purpose of an explanatory sci- ence is to lead to predictions and that the merits of a scientific theory are in proportion to the correct predictions that it implies (cf. Toulmin, 1961: pp. 22-23). To begin with, Toulmin considers that explanatory power cannot be defined in terms of forecasts. He highlights that “plenty of powerful theories have led to no categorical, verifi- able forecasts whatever. One obvious example is Darwin’s theory, explaining the origin of species by reference to varia- tion and natural selection. No scientist has ever used this theory to foretell the coming-into-existence of creatures of a novel species, still less verified his forecasts. Yet many scientists have accepted Darwin’s theory as having great explanatory power” (Toulmin, 1961: pp. 24-25). It seems that, for Toulmin, there is a structural distinction in science between the realm of “explanation” (i.e., explanatory power) and “prediction” (i.e., predictive success), where the former is good enough to have “acceptable science.” In the case of Darwin’s ideas, he maintains that “actual forecasting became possible only with the development of modern ecology and genetics, yet men did not wait for this before recognizing the explanatory merits of the theory of natural selection” (Toulmin, 1961: p. 26). However, for Toulmin, a quite different case could also be possible: a predictive success without an adequate explanatory conception. Historically, “the Babylonians acquired great fore- casting-power, but they conspicuously lacked understanding. To discover that events of a certain kind are predictable — even to develop effective techniques for forecasting them — is evidently quite different from having an adequate theory about 7 On the different stages of Kuhn’s philosophic-methodological ap roach, cf. Gonzale z (2004a), pp. 15-103. 8 The equations of Einstein’s general theory of relativity have yielded three redictions that can be compared with observatio n: “the deflection of light in the sun gravitational field, the precession of the perihelion of Mercury, and the red shift of light from distant stars. Only the first two are actually quan- titative predictions in the present state of the theory,” Kuhn ([1961a], 1977), p. 188, n. 9 “Osiander provides a cl assic statement of the predictiv ist thesis,” Toulmin (1961), p. 41. 4 Cf. Kuhn ([1962b], 1970a), ch. 1, pp. 1-7. “History (...) could produce a decisive transformation in the image of science by which we are now pos- sessed,” Kuhn ([1962b], 1970a), p. 1. 5 Cf. Kuhn ([ 1962a], 197 7), pp. 165-177; especially, p. 167. 6 Cf. Kuhn ([ 1961a], 197 7), pp. 178-224; especially, p. 200. Copyright © 2013 SciRes. 352
W. J. GONZALEZ them, through which they can be understood” (Toulmin, 1961: p. 30). Given his special interest in trying to show the predictivist thesis as mistaken, Toulmin goes very far in his analysis of prediction, because he conceives “scientific prediction” as di- luted in the “explanatory power” of a theory or in the task of “making sense of” a phenomenon. Thus, for him, the term “prediction” can mean the same as “explanatory inference” or “prediction” could be a simple “forecast” that is only one test of the explanatory power of a theory (and it is neither a neces- sary nor a sufficient one), (cf. Toulmin, 1961: p. 35). Toulmin’s mistake is in seeing prediction as a pure instrument, a mere application or “technique” without a real content of its own. Meanwhile Kuhn’s structure of scientific theories — mainly in his first philosophical approach — is focused on two well-known categories: “normal science” and “scientific revo- lution.” In normal science prediction appears within a small class of factual determinations of paradigms: “A part of normal theoretical work, though a small part, consists simply in the use of existing theory to predict factual information of intrinsic value. The manufacture of astronomical ephemerides, the com- putation of lens characteristics, and the production of radio propagation curves are examples of this sort.”10 In this regard, the important thing is to increase both the scope and precision of scientific research. When the analysis moves towards “scientific revolutions” the relation between prediction and “discoveries” (or novelties of fact) appears as well as the nexus between prediction and “inventions” (or novelties of theory), (cf. Kuhn, [1962b], 1970a: p. 52). In the case of discoveries, Kuhn maintains that “the paradigms subscribed to by Roentgen and his contemporaries could not be used to predict X-rays.”11 Thus, a feature of Kuhnian “extraordinary research” is the novelty introduced by the new paradigm that “permits the prediction of phenomena that had been entirely unsuspected while the old one prevailed” (Kuhn, [1962b], 1970a: p. 154). Epistemology of Prediction Epistemologically, prediction is not — for Toulmin — re- duced to knowledge about a possible future event. He considers “prediction” as an “assertion about the occurrence of a particu- lar sort of event — whether in the past, present, or future” (Toulmin, 1961: p. 31). In addition, scientific knowledge can be used either in “categorical predictions” (‘a total eclipse of Moon will be on ...’) or in “hypothetical and conditional pre- dictions” (‘if specified conditions are fulfilled, such and such event will happen’ or ‘a given event happened in the past will occur again if and whenever such and such antecedent condi- tions hold’), (cf. Toulmin, 1961: p. 31). This distinction categorical-conditional or hypothetical pre- dictions has methodological consequences, because Toulmin thinks that the method for testing scientific theories depends on the ability to make conditional predictions rather than cate- gorical predictions. He uses the historical case of the Babylo- nians, where “categorical predictions are relatively unimportant as a test of the explanatory power of a scientific theory, since we may discover how to forecast by simple trial-and-error, without any understanding of the processes involved” (Toulmin, 1961: p. 32). Following this view, Toulmin rejects that commonly a scien- tific theory is to be judged by the categorical forecasts to which it leads. His conception is different: a theory is “to be judged by the number of factual assertions (past, present or future, cate- gorical or hypothetical) which it supports” (Toulmin, 1961: p. 34). He considers that this position can be seen in the example of Newton’s theory. Furthermore, he conceives that “support” here means “makes sense of” or “explains,” where the impor- tant thing is not the empirical success of a prediction but rather the task of offering an intelligible account of the phenomenon. Although Kuhn uses also Newton’s theory as a key case for prediction, it seems that he gives more relevance than Toulmin to empirical success when there is a comparison between Newton’s predictions and actual experiments. For Kuhn, the problem of precision is particularly important (Kuhn, [1962b], 1970a: p. 31). Moreover, precision is — in addition to accuracy — a central epistemological topic of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.12 Thus, he defends that “Newton’s success in pre- dicting quantitative astronomical observations was probably the single most important reason for his theory’s triumph over its more reasonable but uniformly qualitative competitors” (Kuhn, [1962b], 1970a: p. 154). Nevertheless, when Kuhn analyzes the famous case of para- digm change — the emergence of Copernican astronomy —, he is cautious about “predictive success.” He recognizes that the Ptolemaic system “was admirably successful in predicting the changing positions of both stars and planets. No other ancient system had performed so well; for the stars, Ptolemaic astron- omy is still widely used today as an engineering approximation; for the planets, Ptolemy’s predictions were as good as Coper- nicus’. But to be admirably successful is never, for a scientific theory, to be completely successful. With respect both to plan- etary position and to precession of the equinoxes, predictions made with Ptolemy’s system never quite conformed with the best available observations” (Kuhn, [1962b], 1970a: p. 68). Therefore, Kuhn does not endorse here an instrumentalist position. He is not in favor of a predictivist thesis where scien- tific knowledge should be subordinated to a mere precision or pure accuracy of predictions. He is clear enough when he says that “Copernicus’ theory was not more accurate than Ptolemy’s and did not lead directly to any improvement in the cale ndar .”13 The difference is in the new “paradigm,” because it permits the prediction of new phenomena. But Kuhn goes too far when he links it to “incommensurability,” insofar as he holds that, the difference in their predictions (in scientific revolutions), could not occur if the two were logically compatible (cf. Kuhn, [1962b], 1970a: p. 97). Methodol ogy of Prediction Insofar as science has not — for Toulmin — one aim but many, then its development passes through many contrasted stages. Methodologically, he emphasizes several aspects. (i) It is fruitless to seek a single, all-purpose “scientific method,” 10 Kuhn ([1962b], 1970a), p. 30. On the three normal foci for factual scien- tific investigation, cf. Kuhn ([1962 b], 1970a), pp. 25-34. 11 Kuhn ([1962b], 1970a), p. 58. “Maxwell’s electromagnetic theory had not yet been accepted everywhere, and the particular theory of cathode rays was only one of several current speculatio n s,” Kuhn ([1962b], 1970a), p. 58. 12 Cf. Kuhn ([1962b], 1970a), pp. 25-26, 30-31, 36, 42, 52, 153-155, 170, 185 and 199. 13 Kuhn ([1962b], 1970a), p. 154. “Until Kepler, the Co ernican theory scarcely improved upon the predictions of planetary position made by Ptolemy ,” Kuhn ([1962b], 1970a), p. 156. Copyright © 2013 SciRes. 353
W. J. GONZALEZ because science is a human activity that calls for a broad range of different enquires. (ii) There is growth and evolution of sci- entific ideas that do not depend on a unique method. The diver- sity of its methods evolves by variation and selection (cf. Toulmin, 1961: p. 17). Nevertheless, Toulmin sees prediction in instrumental terms: it appears in Foresight and Understanding as a tool or mathe- matical technique. Due this methodological characteristic, a disconnection is possible in science between explanation (or “understanding”) and prediction: “the mathematical techniques used to predict the times and heights of tides, the motions of heavenly bodies, and so on. Yet (as reflection reminds us) some of the most successful techniques for making such predictions have largely lacked the power to explain the events so forecast, having been worked out by trial-and-error and without any theoretical basis; whereas some respectable theories about the very same natural happenings have been predictively almost entirely fruitless” (Toulmin, 1961: p. 27). Again, this instrumental view leads Toulmin to further con- fusion: to blur the conceptual distinction between science and technology . He claims that forecast ing “is a craft or technol ogy [sic], an application of science rather than the kernel of science itself. If a technique of forecasting is successful, that is one more fact, which scientists must try to explain, and may suc- ceed in explaining. Yet a novel and successful theory may lead to no increase in our forecasting skill; while, alternatively, a successful forecasting-technique may remain for centuries without any scientific basis” (Toulmin, 1961: p. 36). Methodologically, prediction is in Kuhn connected to the success of a paradigm, (cf. Kuhn, [1962b], 1970a: pp. 23-24). The advancement of science is made “by increasing the extent of the match between those facts and the paradigm’s predic- tions” (Kuhn, [1962b], 1970a: p. 24). Thus, it seems that the Kuhnian success of a paradigm through predictions has simi- larities with the Lakatosian progress of scientific research pro- grams through prediction of novel facts (cf. Gonzalez, 2001). There are two aspects similar to Lakatos’s approach: 1) a gen- uine scientific advancement is made when predictions lead to novel facts, and 2) anomalies are not a crucial factor for ques- tioning a scientific c on tr ib ution when predictions are involved. These aspects — the relevance of prediction of novel facts and the secondary role of anomalies — can be found in Kuhn’s texts. a) In some cases, discoveries “like the light spot at the center of the shadow of a circular disk, were predictions from the new hypothesis, ones whose success helped to transform it to a paradigm for later work” (Kuhn, [1962b], 1970a: p. 89). b) A “persistent and recognized anomaly does not always induce crisis. No one seriously questioned Newtonian theory because of the long-recognized discrepancies between predictions from that theory and both the speed of sound and the motion of Mercury.” (Kuhn, [1962b], 1970a: p. 81). When Kuhn offers his characterization of “The Historical Structure of Scientific Discovery,” he distinguishes two main kinds of discoveries: (i) “those discoveries — including oxygen, the electric current, X rays, and the electron — which could be predicted from accepted theory in advance and which therefore caught the assembled profession by surprise” (Kuhn, [1962a], 1977: p. 166), and (ii) those discoveries — the neutrino, radio waves, and the elements which filled empty places in the peri- odic table — where the existence of the objects “had been pre- dicted from theory before they were discovered, and the men who made the discoveries therefore knew from the start what to look for” (Kuhn, [1962a], 1977: p. 167). This connection be- tween prediction and discovery is used by Kuhn to point out the teleological character of the research in those cases: the fore- knowledge provided criteria that told scientists when their goal had been reached (cf. Kuhn, [1962a], 1977: p. 167). Prediction as a Human Activity (Ontology of Prediction) Prima facie, ontology of prediction can be seen in two ways, according to the focus of the analysis: on the one hand, the phenomena that are predicted (as we know, for Toulmin, they could be past, present or future); and, on the other hand, the process itself of predicting, which involves a characterization of science as a whole. In this regard, due to a Wittgensteinian influence,14 Toulmin sees science as a human activity rather than an abstract or timeless content, and conceives it as a mul- ti-purpose activity (cf. Toulmin, 1961: p. 18). Moreover, he thinks that the entire range of its activities cannot be encom- passed in a single phrase. Ontologically, prediction as scientific process appears in the context of a human practice. For Toulmin, prediction is based on a “craft” that began on a purely empirical basis, by trial and error, and this happened before its success could be accounted for scientifically. Thus, he distinguishes “scientific predictions and techniques from pre-scientific forecasts and crafts. Any craft may simply be successful as a matter of experience; or alternatively, its efficacy may be intelligible in terms of our general ideas about Nature.” (Toulmin, 1961: p. 37). This means that he is not paying real attention to social sciences. Even though Toulmin emphasizes the importance of history of science and the difference between the historical periods, his philosophy of science highlights the internal factors of scien- tific activity. For him, the central aims of science lie in the field of intellectual creation. Thus, other activities — such as pre- dicting — “are properly called ‘scientific’ from their connec- tion with the explanatory ideas and ideals which are the heart of natural science” (Toulmin, 1961: p. 38). In this regard, a few years later, Toulmin criticizes Kuhn’s views on the distinction between normal and revolutionary science. He wants to em- phasize that “any attempt to understand the nature of intellec- tual development in science must, surely, be to distinguish between the intellectual authority of an established conceptual scheme and the magisterial authority of a dominant individ- ual.”15 Both normal science and scientific revolutions are, for Kuhn, “community-based activities” (Kuhn, 1970b: p. 179). Among these activities is predicting. This activity has — for him — a particular interest, insofar as the possible knowledge and fore- knowledge has more weight than the knowledge that we actu- ally possess, (cf. Kuhn, [1962b], 1970a: p. 171). In this regard, paradigm predictions contribute to the world-view. They have more relevance in scientific revolutions than in normal science, because “no part of the aim of normal science is to call forth new sorts of phenomena” (Kuhn, [1962b], 1970a: p. 24). Predictive success as such is not, for Kuhn, the main aim of scientific activity of predicting. Thus, he is against an instru- mentalist vision of prediction: “to be admirably successful is never, for a scientific theory, to be completely successful” 14 On Wittgenstein’s views on science and prediction, cf. Gonzalez (1996a), pp. 299-332. 15 Toulmin (1970), p. 40. This paper was originally delivered in 1965. Copyright © 2013 SciRes. 354
W. J. GONZALEZ (Kuhn, [1962b], 1970a: p. 68). What matters, for him, is that predictions made could be conformed with the best available observations (cf. Kuhn, [1962b], 1970a: p. 68). This seems a realistic element in Kuhnian analysis, where scientific predic- tion is not a mere “technique.” The world-view can be more precise through prediction and, in addition, scientific prediction can enlarge our vision of the world when the new paradigm leads to phenomena that did not appear in old paradigms (cf. Kuhn, [1962b], 1970a: p. 154). Axiology of Research and Prediction For Toulmin, it is clear that science has performed manifold functions. It performs now and might perform in future, within the whole intellectual economy (cf. Toulmin, 1961: p. 15). Thus, he criticizes the attempts made by philosophers to offer characterizations of science where one requirement, such as predictive success, appears as the unique test of a scientific hypothesis. He rejects this possibility: “one cannot hope to get any real understanding from such a nutshell answer. There is no universal recipe for all science and all scientists” (Toulmin, 1961: p. 15). This pluralism about aims involves a diversity of values. Within the historical context of the beginning of the 1960’s, Toulmin offers a quite different approach from the logical em- piricist (and, especially, distant from Reichenbach’s predictiv- ism) and also diverse from Popper’s conception (insofar as he is very critical with the role of “prediction” in science).16 But Toulmin does share with them the primacy of internal aims of science over the external elements (social, cultural, etc.). For him, “the central aims of science (...) lie in the field of intellec- tual creation” (Toulmin, 1961: p. 38). They are “concerned with a search for understanding — a desire to make the course of Nature not just predictable but intelligible — and this has meant looking for rational patterns of connections in terms of which we can make sense of the flux of events” (Toulmin, 1961: p. 99). Thus, for him, “prediction is all very well; but we must make sense of what we predict” (Toulmin, 1961: p. 115). Even in Kuhn, internal values (epistemological, methodo- logical, etc.) are more important in scientific activity than ex- ternal values (social, cultural, etc.). Moreover, a few years after his famous book, in Postscript-1969 he emphasized the axiol- ogy of research based on prediction when he wrote: “probably the most deeply held values concern predictions: they should be accurate; quantitative predictions are preferable to qualitative ones; whatever the margin of permissible error, it should be consistently satisfied in a given field; and so on” (Kuhn, 1970b: p. 185). Regarding the values themselves in scientific predictions, Kuhn highlights the increase of scope and precision of research (cf. Kuhn, [1962b], 1970a: p. 30). But there is not — for him — a central value such as “truth” or an ultimate goal of scien- tific activity. He rejects the idea of science as a process of evo- lution toward anything. Thus, he claims “if we can learn to substitute evolution-from-what-we-do-know for evolution-to- ward-what-we-wish-to-know, a number of vexing problems may vanish in the process” (Kuhn, [1962b], 1970a: p. 171). Therefore, for Kuhn, prediction — as well as any other scien- tific value — is not an objective value, insofar as in The Struc- ture of Scientific Revolutions the possibility of an objective account of nature or a process that can bring us closer to an ultimate goal such as truth is dismissed (cf. Kuhn, [1962b], 1970a: p. 171). Final Remarks From the comparison between Toulmin and Kuhn on predic- tion, it seems that the differences are more intense than the similitudes. (i) Semantically, prediction has in Toulmin a more vague and polysemous meaning than in Kuhn. This happens as a consequence of the sense of prediction as a “testable implica- tion” whose reference could be in the past, present or future; whereas the Kuhnian approach connects the use of “prediction” with anticipation of an event that, at least for the scientific community, has a novelty and appears as a possible future event. (ii) Logically, the focus in the structure of scientific theories is also diverse in both authors. Toulmin insists on the relation between prediction and the traditional topics of explanation (and “understanding”) of a scientific theory, whereas Kuhn deals with prediction within his distinction “normal science”- “scientific revolution,” which involves “paradigms” rather than individual scientific theories that are seen from a linguistic perspective. (iii) Epistemologically, both thinkers are keen on evolution- ary ideas,17 but scientific knowledge of prediction is considered from two different angles: on the one hand, there is a particular interest in Toulmin to discredit any predictivist approach on prediction (statements that could be about past, present or fu- ture events); and, on the other hand, there is a notorious em- phasis in Kuhn on prediction as a key contribution to scientific knowledge. (iv) From a methodological point of view, both philosophers of science shared that there is not a single, all-purpose “scien- tific method,” because they see science as a human activity open to a broad range of different enquires. The difference is in Kuhn’s insistence on prediction as connected to genuine nov- elty (i.e., future rather than past or present) and that prediction can lead to discoveries. To some extent, his views connect to Lakatos’s perspective on prediction and novel facts based on historical cases of science. (v) Ontologically, the scientific activity of predicting is to some extent different in Toulmin and Kuhn. For the former, prediction is an impersonal “craft” or “technique” (cf. Toulmin, 1961: p. 36); meanwhile, for the latter, prediction is developed by the scientific community towards precision and accuracy. The technique is an instrument to be inserted in an explanatory context in order to “make sense” of the world, whereas the Kuhnian emphasis on precision and accuracy, which highlights quantitative predictions over qualitative ones, looks for a genuine information on the world that has weight on its own. (vi) Axiologically, prediction has a clearer value in Kuhn than in Toulmin. But, due to the general approach of the phi- losophic-methodological period of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, prediction appears as a value of a relativistic framework. Toulmin does not go so far. His instrumentalism is open to the value of truth: “science progresses, not by recog- 17 Evolutionary Epistemology — or at least a Darwinian influence on scien- tific knowledge — is in both authors. “In the evolution of scientific ideas, as in the ev olution of speci es, chan ge resu lts fr om the sel ective perpetu ation o variants,” Toulmin (1961), p. 110. C f. Kuhn ([19 62b], 1970a ) , pp. 170-172. 16 Popper insists on the role of prediction within the general philosophy and methodology of science, where he is very critical with prediction in the realm of social sciences. Cf. Gonzalez (2004b), pp. 78-98. Copyright © 2013 SciRes. 355
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