Innovation and Philosophy of Science, What Thomas Kuhn and Joseph Alois Schumpeter had in common?
Innovation and big discoveries in the field of science go hand in hand. One work up another mostly. Although some innovation came from the years of accumulation of knowledge. Some technology and innovations come from single discoveries. This had changed a lot in the 21st century. As more and more companies decided to do their research in their privately owned research centers, innovation and research became more secluded and singular. This is also explained by the two important scientists Joseph Alois Schumpeter and Thomas Kuhn.
Schumpeter was a political economist who was born in Austro-Hungarian Empire. He was born in 1883 at Triesch, Habsburg Moravia (now Třešť in the Czech Republic) [1]. He served briefly as Finance Minister of German-Austria in 1919. In 1932, he emigrated to the United States to become a professor at Harvard University, where he remained until the end of his career, and in 1939 obtained American citizenship [1].
Schumpeter wrote “Capitalism, socialism and democracy ” [3] in 1942 which put another perspective on innovation and changed his ideas about innovation and technology. In this book, he states that innovation happens with big companies, R&D laboratories, and accumulated knowledge between humankind. It was not caused by the single man’s knowledge, not big discoveries but accumulated knowledge, which is called “creative accumulation”. According to Schumpeter, in the second concept, the entrepreneurship role has decreased and innovation has become a habit. Innovation was a plural and collective endeavor. With this idea, “creative destruction” becomes “creative accumulation.”
Thomas Samuel Kuhn was an American historian and philosopher of science whose 1962 book “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” was influential in both academic and popular circles, introducing the term paradigm shift, which has since become an English-language idiom [4].
In the book “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” [5] Kuhn states that every paradigm is destructed by big leaps not accumulated knowledge. It starts to fall with out-of-bounds, non-linear results. The first expression of the scientists is fixing the theorem by adding and subtracting something. However, as the crisis continues, revolution becomes inevitable and a big change in the paradigm happens. This is the same concept as Schumpeter’s Mark I [2] “Creative Destruction”. Innovation and paradigm shift in science and companies happens with big leaps of discoveries. However, I think that they are all wrong on this subject. Science is a mixture of accumulated knowledge and big leaps of discoveries. Both happen at the same time. We gather knowledge, find new areas of usage, investigate the usage and produce new things from the current paradigm. This creates science. However, if there is a new crisis (crisis in particle physics right now, for example, QED theorem, dark matter, etc.) this new crisis is created by the accumulated knowledge of the scientific community also. What we called a “big leap” is the science union of different theorems mostly. Purely hypothetical, however, Einstein might not create the general relativity theorem if there was no Riemann Geometry. But also, one can say that Riemann geometry will be created even if there was no Riemann, by someone else, I cannot say anything to this theorem. Purely hypothetical. There is a similarity between Schumpeter’s and Kuhn’s hypotheses even though they are from different kinds of science and I am representing a new idea, a mixture of both of them.
Also, there are a lot of things I want to talk about in Kuhn’s book. According to Kuhn [5], theories can answer and be valid by making the necessary adjustments within themselves. The same thing can be said for democracy. Democracy is not the universally accepted best ideology but changing itself and correcting the laws along the way can significantly increase the life quality of the citizens.
When we accept a new science theorem, we change the language of that area of science. Gravity entered our language when Newton found the gravity theory. So, we are not explaining natural phenomena with the same language that we are using in the past.
On page 98, Kuhn says talks about the experiments and their usage in the advancement of science. And he states that out-of-bounds results are never considered in science [5]. That is all that matters in science right now. Different results and different experiments are taken into consideration and contribute to the science. Out of bounds, non-linear results also created a new field in physics which is called Chaos.
Kuhn states that, when an experiment is performed, it is created in an isolated purely theoretical space, therefore, restricting the conditions. For example, when I create a 25 degree celcius, 2 bar, the specific atmosphere on a flask, yes, I am creating a hypothetical space in the laboratory. However, this is the simulation, model of a real medium. I am modeling the real world and study on it. This creates new results and theorems about that space. And it creates useful inventions. Philosophers create their theorems with a starting point initial condition. Mathematicians also. Initial conditions cannot be questioned in both fields. Without initial conditions, we cannot do science, philosophy, and inventions. Because we cannot be sure this World is real at the first. “I think therefore I exist” cannot satisfy our initial conditions anymore due to quantum physics. So unquestioned initial conditions are created in all fields and we must be conscious of that and try to reduce them to a minimum.
References
[1] Wikipedia, “Joseph Alois Schumpeter,” Wikipedia, [Online]. Available: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Schumpeter. [Accessed 15 01 2023].
[2] J. A. Schumpeter, Theory of economic development, 1912.
[3] J. A. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, 1942.
[4] Wikipedia, “Thomas Kuhn,” Wikipedia, [Online]. Available: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Kuhn. [Accessed 15 01 2023].
[5] T. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, İstanbul: Kırmızı Yayınları, 2019.
