The Reception of the Copernican Theory in the German Protestant Universities and the Limits of the Kuhnian Concept of Scientific Paradigm

Abstract

With the reception of Thomas Kuhn’s philosophy of science, Hungarian philosophy followed current international trends in the philosophical discussion on science. At the same time, however, a particular, simplified interpretation of Kuhn’s theory became dominant, one-sidedly adhering to the 1962 version of Kuhn’s book and ignoring Kuhn’s intention to correct his original ideas. The concept of science that thus gained ground and often leaned into radical relativism, not only offers a simplifying, ideological view of sciences, but by dogmatically insisting on some aspects of Kuhn’s original theory of the scientific paradigm (e.g. incommensurability, the communication collapse due to linguistic-conceptual reasons, the holistic view of paradigm shift) also blocks exploration of the diversity of the concrete history of science, and expects that the events in the latter should always be interpreted strictly according to its simplistic understanding and terms. As a criticism of this interpretation, we first briefly outline the Kuhnian concept of scientific paradigm. Then on the basis of the achievements of historical research related to the early German reception of Copernicus’ theory we argue for the indefensibility of the Kuhnian confrontation of the Ptolemaic and the Copernican theory. On the one hand, we point out that not only the radical relativistic concept of science (which often refers to Kuhn’s ideas but which Kuhn rejected personally), but even Kuhn’s original theory is unsuitable for the correct understanding of the Copernican turn. On the other hand, we argue that a revised, structured, non-holistic version of Kuhn’s theory of paradigm, incorporating several details of Kuhn’s later concept of “disciplinary matrix”, constitutes an applicable theoretical tool for the interpretation of the first (Protestant) phase of the Copernican reception.