Theory is a lens for which to understand a thing. Whether that thing is a process, a series of empirical results, or a prediction of future events to come, ‘theory’ plays a key role in defining what things are, how we interact with them, and how we make sense of the world around us. There are, however, equitable contentions within the field of science of how theories are defined and how they are used. This often boils down to philosophers of science debating about whether or a theory is ‘good’. A ‘good’ theory can be summed up as observing what you predicted, that no other theory could predict. To further this point, you cannot find the conditions necessary that would make your observation not the case. Should the conditions arise such that another theory can explain your observation, look for the things that one theory predicts, but the other does not. Throughout the course of this seminar, many viewpoints have been presented and rightfully contended. This process of engagement has allowed the surfacing of key factors that make a theory objectively ‘good’.

Sense-Making

One of the key components of good theory is that it makes sense of something. This sense-making characteristic of a theory comes in two primary forms, explanatory power and predictive power. Predictive power is by no means necessary for a theory to function but a theory is often used as a means of creating and supporting predictable outcomes of the future. In terms of explanatory power, it bifurcates into two distinct methods, causal and functional. The first is retro-explanatory; it identifies and explains a clear cause of a thing. An example of this would be Darwin’s theory of evolution by means of natural selection. Darwin’s theory explains how the things that are, came to be based on observation and empirical evidence of the past. These theories, almost by necessity, are causal to the world around us. The second is not looking at the past for a cause, but rather a function that a thing serves. The weakness of looking at the function, however, is that functionality always reduces to a cause (Pavitt, 2000).

Boundary Specification

Another key aspect of good theory is that there are limits on its scope. Popper (1980) began to identify some of the problems of a theory without limits by realizing that, “whatever happened, always confirmed it. Thus, its truth appeared manifest; and unbelievers were clearly people who did not want to see the manifest truth…” (p. 21). During discussion, Spitzberg (2013) pointed out his view on a theory’s necessary and sufficient boundary constraints. Essentially the more a theory explains and the richer an explanation a theory can provide, the better. When evaluating theories, it is not enough to ask, “is this true?”. Rather, a better question might be, “under what conditions is this true?”. Good theory should clearly define what the concepts are, how they relate, and under what conditions they are related (Spitzberg, 2013). Furthermore, does this theory apply to everything within the boundaries? If not, the boundaries need to be re-stated with respect to the intra-boundary specification.

Consistency

Examining the internal and external consistency of a theory can be seen to be one of the most simplistic methods of evaluating theory. Perhaps the quickest way to a theory’s death is when a contradiction is found its own parameters. It would be hard to consider a theory ‘good’ if it were inconsistent. A theory cannot state that a thing will not happen and at the same time offer conditions that would allow for that thing to happen. External consistency, whilst most subjective, must conform to our best understanding of reality (Spitzberg, 2013). Keeping in mind that our senses are easily fooled, the theory must hold up in what we consider the objective reality.

Verifiability and Falsification

Popper (1980) contested the explanatory power of verification by pointing out that “the world was full of verifications of theory” (p. 21). While verification is important to test a theory’s measurements and observe phenomena, without falsification, there is no scientific merit. Without falsification, there is no way to verify the veracity of a claim. That being said, just because a theory is not falsifiable does not mean it is not useful, meaningful or important — it just doesn’t qualify as science. Einstein’s theory of relativity wasn’t verifiable for close to twenty years after he presented it. Furthermore, not all theory has to be verifiable or falsifiable. When looking at particle physics, it is a common method to measure the ‘negative’ to make sense of observations. The important thing about measuring the negative is that the predictions are still incredibly precise, whether or not we have to tools to observe the actual particle.

The problems of induction and deduction should also be covered, as both are central to certain paradigm’s method of progressing science. Verification of a theory, such as “all swans are white” is problematic in that no amount of empirical data can determine that the next swan will not be black. Evaluating a logical syllogism’s conclusion, such as “Socrates is mortal” is problematic in that there is nothing to support that the premises are true. By defining men as mortal, you are using a tautological argument, which is effectively untethering what science grounded itself upon.

Paradigm

A paradigm is a worldview that embodies a collective set of habits, beliefs, and ways of interpreting and understanding the world. A paradigm does not change the facts of a matter, but it does change how we orient ourselves to the facts. A new paradigm had emerged when we transitioned from a geocentric to a heliocentric view of the universe. Within the constraints of the geocentric paradigm, a heliocentric paradigm did not and could not make sense. Our perceptions and understanding had changed, but the earth, the sun, and the planetary orbits had not. This is a perfect example of scientists orienting themselves to falsifying their ideas and beliefs.

Kuhn (1970) emphasized the importance of language and was notably criticized as having a relativistic view of science as a paradigm. To further this idea, Kuhn’s critics attacked his idea that crisis comes out of an anomaly, which would further the relativist argument against Kuhn, despite his insistence that he is a hard-lined progressivist (Masterman, 1970). Kuhn’s underlying argument was more focused on the fact that scientific communities, specifically scientific communities that shared the same paradigm were intrinsically connected through their language. Popper’s primary contention is that once the world becomes language-dependent, truth is merely a product of language (Spitzberg, 2013). That system doesn’t work if you assume that the results you’re going to use to falsify the hypothesis are a product of the same set of language barriers. The results have to be unambiguously contradictory to the hypothesis. That doesn’t work if the results are based on the language within a community.

Spitzberg (2013) introduces us to what he sees as the four languages of a scientific paradigm. Using these four languages creates a web of understanding that scientific inquiry can collectively utilize to make sense of the world. The first language is hypothetico-deductive. It consists of testing the null hypothesis to disconfirm a theory and emphasizes the more tests a theory goes through, the better. The second language is measurement. Translating data into replicable metrics is a key factor in creating a universally understood theory. Next is design, which encapsulates the art and science of setting up an experiment, including control groups, potential influencing factors, and model creation. Lastly, probability is a language of mathematics that tends to be very applicable and understood across paradigms.

Perhaps one of the most important topics surrounding paradigms is the concept of incommensurability. Kuhn describes the concept of incommensurability as a “gestalt switch”. To use the example cited during the seminar of the rabbit and duck illusion, we are only able to see one or the other at any given time. We can freely switch between seeing the rabbit or the duck, but cannot see both at the same time.

Paradigmatic differences really seem to establish themselves and their methods not in the data that is collected, but in the types of questions that are asked. Looking within the communication discipline, the lines in the sand can be clearly seen. Traditional quantitative researchers might construct a theory based on the data and use that theory as a means of progressing knowledge. However, if someone was doing ethnography, the subjective experience becomes the dominant feature and the language constructing that experience will be tailored to match that experience. Theory might be able to be applied after the research has concluded, but it cannot be a filter of experience that selects and rejects certain kinds of experience. If conversation analysis were brought into the picture, theory would not be derived from or applied to the data gathered, as the transcripts’ goal is to embody the experience and meaning of conversation. For a rhetorical scholar to ask, ‘what does this artifact say about the worldview that is being created’ is an entirely different type of question than an inquiry into the reliability of intercultural-competence questionnaires.

Having established that two incommensurable paradigms cannot work together internally, they can work together externally and in the process create a new paradigm whereas both paradigms are using similar language to ask similar questions. This kind of triangulation of theories and methods would provide a deeper and richer understanding of a thing that neither of the two paradigms would have been able to conclude independently (Feyerabend, 1980).

Science, as a paradigm, is simply a better method of understanding and pursuing truth than its alternatives, even if we never know when we have reached the truth. The process of engaging in scientific inquiry simply leads to better questions, better theories and better understandings of what appears to be, reality.

Privilege & Progress

Progress was never something I personally ever thought about for more a fleeting moment and assumed it was something linear, akin to time, in which everything had naturally progressed to be “better” than it was. As if someone had, as Kuhn (1970) might reference, switched a light on that hadn’t been on before I understood that not all things ‘progress’ and the idea of progress is highly contentious and filtered by values and preference. Art doesn’t have a ‘measure of progress’ in the same sense that science does. One would be hard-pressed to argue that cubism is inherently ‘more progressive’ than impressionism. Sure, it may be newer and different but only in terms of taste are they preferred. This creates a wider array of options but does not necessarily build on the concept of depth of art as a paradigm.

The question that is now begged is, ‘does science progress’, and if so, how? When a paradigmatic revolution occurs, how is its progress measured and accepted by the scientific community at large? In part, a theory can resolve what previous paradigms could not. Newton’s laws could not account for Mercury’s orbit but when Einstein’s theory of relativity came along, it accounted for everything that Newton’s laws did and more. Relativity accounted for Mercury’s orbit and effectively subsumed the previously dominant paradigm of thought. This was the ‘gestalt switch’ that Kuhn (1970) referred to.

Kuhn’s view of science is that it doesn’t progress in a rational way but rather through “fits and starts”(1970). These fits and starts are less of a subject matter, but rather a community of people who use common methods, common views, and common language. They take for granted the techniques they use to understand the world and progress within the paradigm through puzzle-solving. Eventually, anomalies and crisis emerge, which means their world is problematic and that there is something wrong with their current paradigm — but it still works better than any other paradigm to answer the kinds of questions they are asking. Anomaly within a paradigm demonstrates that a paradigm is merely a convenient way of getting things done. As Laudan et al. (1986) pointed out, we cannot have philosophy for the sake of philosophy; we need people to actually do things.

A crisis can come from another paradigm, which creates a unique set of problems regarding language barriers, but if the new paradigm can solve the puzzles the previous paradigm could not, as seen with Einstein and Newton, the new paradigm subsumes the old paradigm. This type of revolution stimulates scientific change and as change is stimulated, scientists accrete more knowledge over time through puzzle solving, which further progresses science. This revolution is a great example of having a standard unit of measurement, math, with which to measure progress. It becomes increasingly difficult to measure progress without a standard unit of measurement (Masterman, 1970).

Popper would argue that we know more because of what we know we didn’t. This is the basic premise of falsification. Popper would further his argument by insisting that the problem with science is not ideological, but rather the subjectivity involved with science (Feyerabend, 1970). As scientists, we must fiercely criticize our own theories and ideas, casting aside personal beliefs in order to fully understand our own theories. We must further expand our criticisms by means of utilizing alternative theories and alternative paradigms to do science. Perhaps one of Popper’s biggest contentions with Kuhn lies in the fact that when Kuhn comes across an anomaly, he accepts that and continues to work within the paradigm because it’s simply better than the alternatives. Popper would say that paradigms should not continue through an anomaly. For a paradigm to persist, despite obvious errors, means that people aren’t taking the paradigm seriously; they are working on belief, and not theoretical conjecture.

If Kuhn is right about language, how are we capable of generating anomalies? If language creates what we see and what we expect, anomalies would indicate a more empirical and more objective world. How can we test theories against each other if they are constructed by language? Data, therefore, carries a different, non-theoretical role. This opens up the argument that extends beyond the reach of this response to linguistic determinism and the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Does language alter reality, or simply provide new labels? Gergen (1979) insists that there is a world out there that is non-linguistic; we need more voices, tests, and paradigms to progress. We need methods that celebrate the differences between cultural and linguistic construction.

Feyerabend (1970) emphasized that we progress through counter-induction and must take an idea and criticize the hell out of it. If all observation and all research is theory-laden, then we run into the problem of language dictating the lens for which to understand observations. Because of this, science itself cannot be totally objective as it is fundamentally ideological. To pursue knowledge in the most objective manner possible, one must use multiple paradigms to enrich and deepen our understanding of a thing (Spitzberg, 2013). Lakatos (1970) would support this notion of progress as long as the multi-paradigmatic approach generates new substantive questions. This would be considered progressive in that the questions that are being asked are looking for ways to throw out what we know.

Laudan et al. (1986) outlined the concept of privilege to a scholarly voice and why it should be seen as a ‘better’ voice for progress in the field of science. Ultimately, science and its’ foundations are grounded in the concept of creating an “accurate and all-embracing theory of science” (Laudan et al., p. 149, 1986). This concept was to not only establish science as a distinct set of guiding principles and a method of inquiry, but to also infer cultural implications (Laudan et al., 1986).

The reason that the scholarly voice is given a sense of privilege is simply that science aims to be as objective as possible and scientists are constantly looking for ways falsify their current views. In the quest for truth by means of scientific endeavor, ego is set aside and ideas that scholars have been pursuing for years may be overturned with the discovery of a new paradigm. While regressive researchers seek to hold onto what is and what has been, progressive research continues to push the limits of knowledge; even it means casting aside long-held theories and beliefs.

Demarcation

Popper believes that there is an end game to science that can be found through a falsification as a means of demarcation (Spitzberg, 2013). This is primarily used to distinguish the differences between science and pseudo-science and he anticipates an orderly world of science, which is why demarcation is necessary. Pseudo-science is effectively un-falsifiable because its’ advocates are not able to answer the question, “what would it take for you to not believe that?” No amount of logic, evidence or persuasion will change a person’s mind when coming from that paradigm, if it could be called that. To further the idea, as Popper (1980) points out, these same people will see perfectly reasonable verifications of their theory. As Popper states, “…the world is full of verifications” (p. 21, 1980) stating that you will always be able to find what you are looking for. This is precisely the reason that Popper insisted that a scientific theory must be falsifiable (1980).

Astrology is a prime example of verification in that the ‘predictions’ are often so vague that they will always apply to a person in some way, shape, or form. This destroys the testability of astrology as a legitimate theory because it can never be wrong. Popper summarized this notion by stating, “It is a typical soothsayer’s trick to predict things so vaguely that the predictions can hardly fail: that they become irrefutable” (Popper, p. 23, 1980). Popper was clearly aware of the problems inherent to inductive and deductive pursuits of knowledge — that neither can prove anything. He also understood that the value of a single inductive observation would be able to falsify a claim (Spitzberg, 2013). The beauty in this method is that the more tests and failures to falsify a claim over time, the more we know that we are getting closer to ‘truth’.

Popper emphasized the importance of riskiness in a theory, as stemmed from its potential of being falsified. This actually leads to something resembling a paradox in that, the better a theory is, the more easily falsifiable it is. It would only take a single fossil in the wrong strata of the earth to completely debunk the theory of evolution by means of natural selection.

Popper (1980) lays out in the criterion of a scientific theory as such:

(1) It is easy to obtain confirmations or verifications, for nearly every theory — if we look for confirmations.

(2) Confirmations should count only if they are the result of risky predictions; . . .

(3) Every “good” scientific theory is a prohibition: it forbids certain things to happen. The more a theory forbids, the better it is.

(4) A theory which is not refutable by any conceivable event is nonscientific. Irrefutability is not a virtue of theory (as people often think) but a vice.

(5) Every genuine test of a theory is an attempt to falsify it or to refute it. Testability is falsifiability; . . .

(6) Confirming evidence should not count except when it is the result of a genuine test of the theory; . . .

(7) Some genuinely testable theories, when found to be false, are still upheld by their admirers — for example by introducing ad hoc some auxiliary assumption, or by re-interpreting the theory ad hoc in such a way that it escapes refutation. . .

Popper’s stance did not go uncontested by any means was a source of much criticism about falsification and progressing science. Greenwald et al. (1986) bought up the idea of the disconfirmation dilemma, which is basically stating that even if a theory has been falsified, there are a number of variables that could have contributed to the hypothesis failing. To Greenwald et al. (1986), a theory is a view of the world that one is inclined to keep and would likely scrutinize the method searching for a procedural error, rather than a theoretical error. Conversely, there is also the confirmation dilemma, which states that even though a theory has been empirically verified, that is not to say that it wasn’t because of an error that happened to be in favor of the theory. Greenwald et al. (1986) is often seen as the ‘nail in Popper’s coffin’ in that because of the ambiguity and potential for error, demarcation cannot salvage science (Spitzberg, 1986). This point is extended and casts a shadow over Popper, Kuhn, and Gergen by saying that none of them have it right because science just works. By nature, science is self-correcting and it doesn’t matter what we believe to be correct, science has a way of uncovering, or at least getting closer to, the truth.

When I first considered joining the graduate program, started doing interviews with professors, and sitting in on classes, I was inundated with verifications that this was the kind of environment I was seeking, potentially as a long-term commitment of career and going into research. Evidence that matched my predictions and expectations were everywhere. One of the biggest lessons I have learned from the first year in the program, and even more so from this seminar can be summed up in two words, ‘it depends’. I was told to get very comfortable with the idea of not being totally sure about ideas that I might have once presupposed as ‘truth’ and taken for granted. Reading Popper’s concept of demarcation, I cannot help but fall back on ‘it depends’ as a means of assessment. There are simply too many variables to take into account to give a universal assessment. If we move forward with the question of, ‘under what conditions is this thing true and how do the concepts relate to each other’, we would be moving closer to a form of truth, even if it is not the ‘final truth’. Popper’s demarcation works wonders as a means of drawing a line in the sand between science and pseudoscience. Furthermore, the idea that something as fundamentally important to science such as evolution, which accounts for the biological variation in life, could be falsified with a single fossil is astounding.

There will always be new information to make sense of the world around us. The level of critical thinking and how we choose to analyze the data will determine our perspective and ultimately our paradigm of understanding. Given that science is self-correcting by nature, so long as great minds continue to push the limits of what truth is, or could be, science will continue to get closer to the truth.

Paradigm Wars

The division between different paradigms of thought can be seen most clearly in the objective and the strategy of resolution of each of the paradigm. First, why care about the paradigm? Given that human behavior is rarely motivated out of pure necessity, (Spitzberg, 2013), there is a clear reason to understand the motivating factors that guide everyday decisions and shape the patterns of thought for the world in which we live.

Language clearly plays a role in how we interpret and understand the world around us. From a critical perspective, the subjective interpretation creates the world and thus guides the map of knowledge. However, traditional theorists see and use science as something that is cumulatively progressive. While both serve their purposes, in the search for truth by means of scientific endeavor, a traditional approach to science will self-correct and produce evidence that gets closer to ‘truth’.

Tsou (2003) claims that the central feature of radical empiricism that Feyerabend (1970) opposes is the idea that a “highly confirmed” scientific theory should be retained until it is refuted, while alternative theories in the same domain ought to be postponed until such a refutation has taken place. Feyerabend argues that the effect of following this seemingly benign prescription is the protection of well-accepted theories from evidence that could lead to their refutation or otherwise expose their limitations (Spitzberg, 2013).

Popper and Kuhn are both comparative — Popper compares to what has failed against as a means of furthering knowledge or at least getting close to it. Feyerabend, having the choice amongst all these, and we’ve looked at all the others and made the decision. Standards compete the same way that theories do in a given social or political context. Kuhn and Feyerabend were at the forefront of incorporating social factors into the inquiry of science. Because of this, Feyerabend was seen as the proto-post-modernist.

If paradox is embraced by postmodernists, we run the risk of slipping into radical relativism, where anything goes. Traditional scholars criticize post-modernists for this exact reason as PMs revel and embrace in paradox.

The biggest split between differing paradigms boils down the objectivity and subjectivity of language. The traditional, reductionist, positivist, empiricist, and hypothetico-deductive approaches favor a more objective approach. In pursuit of truth and in the process of scientific inquiry, this is clearly the preferred method because personal beliefs and long-held assumptions can be thrown out in an instant. Science doesn’t care about beliefs because over time, as science self-corrects previous observations, or subsumes previous theories with empirically better methods with more explanatory and/or predictive power knowledge progresses. If nothing else, the progression of knowledge and being able to state we know more about a thing than we previously did is the essence of science.

The biggest problem with the critical studies, interpretive paradigms, hermeneutics, post-modernists, and deconstructionists is that it becomes much more difficult to clearly delineate a form of progress with regards to science. Sure, things can be interpreted in a way that might create something new, novel, or interesting, but that’s not necessarily what science and the pursuit of truth are about. Science is simply an objective pursuit of what is real and what is true. The ability to revel in paradox would be a wonderful thing for an objective paradigm but it begins to untether that which is, at its core, science.

It is all too convenient for a relativistic approach to explain the objective. One cannot argue the relevance of causality and argue that language creates reality. Language cannot be relative because the argument that language is relative is presupposing a mutual understanding of the language that allows that argument to be stated.

References

Feyerabend, P. (1980). How to defend society against science. In E. D. Klemke, R. Hollinger, & A. D. Kline (Eds.), Introductory readings in the philosophy of science (pp. 55–65). Buffalo, NY: Prometheus.

Gergen, K. J. (1979). The positivist image in social psychological theory. In A. R. Buss (Ed.), Psychology in social context (pp. 193–212). New York: Irvington.

Greenwald, A.G., Pratkanis, A.R., Leippe, M.R., & Baumgardner, M.H. (1986). Under what conditions does theory obstruct research progress? Psychological Review, 93, 216–229.

Kuhn, T. S. (1970). Postscript-1969. The structure of scientific revolutions (2nd ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago.

Lakatos, I. (1970). Falsification and the methodology of scientific research programmes. In I. Lakatos & A. Musgrave (Eds.), Criticism and the growth of knowledge (Proceedings of the International Colloquium in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. 4, pp. 91–195). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Laudan, L., Donovan, A., Laudan, R., Barker, P., Brown, H., Leplin, J., Thagard, P., & Wykstra, S. (1986). Scientific change: Philosophical models and historical research. Synthese, 69, 141–223.

Masterman, M. (1970). The nature of a paradigm. In I. Lakatos & A. Musgrave (Eds.), Criticism and the growth of knowledge (Proceedings of the International Colloquium in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. 4, pp. 59–89). Cambridge: Cambridge University.

Pavitt, C. (2000). Answering questions requesting scientific explanations for communication. Communication Theory, 10, 379–404.

Popper, K. (1980). Science: Conjectures and refutations. In E. D. Klemke, R. Hollinger, & A. D. Kline (Eds.), Introductory readings in the philosophy of science (pp. 19–34). Buffalo, NY: Prometheus.

Tsou, J. Y. (2003). Reconsidering Feyerabend’s “anarchism.” Perspectives on Science, 11, 208–235.