What does a proof do if it does not prove?

Trevor Pinch

pp. 171-215

in: Everett Mendelsohn, Peter Weingart, Richard Whitley (eds), The social production of scientific knowledge, Berlin, Springer, 1977

Abstract

One of the more interesting problems to arise from the Kuhnian (1) analysis of science is the problem of communication between scientists with differing cognitive commitments. By conceiving of scientists as being bound by monistic paradigms which change at times of scientific revolution Kuhn raised the problem of how scientists working within rival paradigms communicate. Kuhn refers to the adherents of the rival paradigms as talking "through each other" (2) which implies that little communication between paradigms occurs.