What makes Thomas Kuhn’s ideas on the history of science so important and exciting to intellectual non-scientists is this: he shows that scientific discoveries are not final metaphysical facts. In actuality, what is discovered are patterns of  recurring phenomena within particular conditions (which are themselves phenomenal). We can describe and predict this regularity using various kinds of models, most notably mathematical models.

The practical consequence of the discovery is this: more than one model is capable of adequately describing or predicting the same phenomenal occurrence.

One can discover one scientific truth, and be completely right about what was discovered, but to regard the discovery as a discovery of the truth — the only possible scientific conception of what was observed — is groundless. Science does not deal in absolutes. Science is relative in a rigorously disciplined, non-arbitrary way, and its right to be considered true rests entirely on its rigor, never on the intuition that it might or must be true.

An idea that has not been subjected to scientific torture testing is not to be considered false, it is to be considered either 1) scientifically hypothetical if it is testable through the methods of science, which means it must be falsifiable, or 2) extra-scientifically possible if it is not testable through the methods of science, and/or not falsifiable. The proper response to the former is experiment and submission to the results of the experiment. The proper response to the latter is to take it as a matter of opinion, which does not mean to confuse it for non-truth.

There are more forms of truth than scientific truth, but these forms of truth stand outside of science’s domain. If they set foot inside science’s domain and fails to follow the scientific method that idea is a crimes against science, and should be regarded as crimes against mind. Or if you prefer religious language — a sin against spirit. The principles of coming to agreement on the phenomenal world are foundational to coming to any kind of agreement. The scientific method is the foundation of reasonable dialogue. Without reasonable dialogue there is only coercion, dominance, slavery, evasion, deception or violence.

So — Where does science end and these others begin? What is the relationship between science and these other forms of truth? And what exactly is the nature of these truths? What subject or object do extra-scientific truths represent?  And if scientific method cannot establish their truth or false hood, what  standard of truth holds? In other words, are they reasonable truths discussable and resolvable through dialogue?

These are damn interesting questions, and they are also worth asking for practical reasons. What this means is that if a person presents a distasteful, depressing or otherwise demoralizing picture of a situation which requires a distasteful, depressing, demoralizing practical response and succeeds in supports the position scientifically, one is not forced to invalidate their science if one wishes to present an alternative vision and response.

The delusion that a truth is the truth requires only that someone establish the truth of their own proposition to get their way. If one establishes he is right, no further discussion and deliberation can be brought to a end, because by doing so he has also established that all dissent is wrong by definition because it is contrary to the truth. Kuhn blew that up.

Fact is, two opposing true conceptions can conflict, and if one takes the conflict seriously (as science does), an entire community is led toward fuller conceptions of truth that can partially negate but unify and inter-extend the competing ideas. (See my old post on dialectic.) Further, the negations can open up new possibilities and expose new fertile ground for thought. And often that new fertile ground opens new ethical possibilities as well: new ways to see the world and exist in the world — a new ethos.

At bottom, this is the promise of Kuhn. The fact that the world or some piece or aspect of the world looks closed, permanently settled and dark, does not mean that it will not soon be shown to be otherwise. Someone has to see that otherwise first, and that someone is invariable challenged, if not attacked or persecuted.

And I would add, even if a thinker is shown to be dead wrong in his hypotheses, if he sticks to his principles and his hypothesis dies honorably by them he still deserves utmost honor.

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One place where these principles are supremely useful is in design. Many times people think they are seeking the solution to a problem of some kind. This means the first solution conceived that holds up under scrutiny must be the solution that was sought. Further, once a complete picture of a solution to a chaotic problem is presented the solution invariably seems retroactively inevitable. But anyone who has done a great deal of design knows that this does not mean that another equally inevitable-seeming solution was not possible. Further, one of the other possible solutions might have virtues the first discovered one might not. And one of these virtues might be that the solution somehow magically seems to be not only viable and inevitable but also intimately on-brand, or on-brand in an exciting inspiring way. In other words, a design sometimes opens up and reveals the brand ethos of a company in a deeply compelling way.

So often I’m the pain-in-the-ass on a project who says: “Yeah, this will work, but we do not love it, and we do not love it as a manifestation of this brand I have learned to love.”