Theory Laden Perception Philosophy of Science
What we Perceive Depends on the Dominant Scientific Paradigm
Every one of us wears a subjective mask that filters out particular information from the vast amount of data that bombards our senses everyday. The result of this is the individual subjective experience that we all have of the world.
Scientific Paradigms are the Foundation of Perception
Before Copernicus made it widely accepted that the Earth orbits the Sun, Westerners spent hundreds of years dogmatised by the theory that the heavens are unchanging. Importantly, within fifty years of Copernicus's discovery, astronomers suddenly began observing comets, planets and sunspots. All of which are examples of the mutable nature of the heavens which had never been noticed before.
This scientific paradigm shift (the Copernican Revolution) directly resulted in these new discoveries, which shows that what we perceive is heavily dependant upon the dominant scientific theories of our time. As John Cottingham points out in his book, Western Philosophy, further evidence for theory laden perception is that the Chinese, who had no similar theory concerning an unchanging nature of the heavens, perceived sunspots hundreds of years before any Westerners did. Their respective dominant scientific paradigms made these two cultures pick out different details as important and essentially perceive different things; even though they were looking at the same sky.
Scientific Paradigm Shifts Change our Entire World of Experience
As Kuhn argues in his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, such examples of people observing different phenomena because they live in different paradigms are not about different interpretation of the same data. For example the Western and Chinese observers were not interpreting the same data differently; instead their subjective masks filtered out completely different imformation for their minds to scrutinise in the first place.
Crucially no one can choose what information their mind receives when they observe phenomena. The scientific paradigm that dominates your time will decide that for you. Depending upon the dominant scientific framework, our subjective masks will filter out different information as important and relevant, leaving a different picture of the world for each observer to study. The result of this is that the two observations of a sunset, pre-Copernicus and post-Copernicus, consist of two different worlds of experience that are incomparable. They have nothing in common.
Scientific Revolutions Occur when the Dominant Paradigm is in Crisis
A scientific paradigm is in crisis when it no longer predicts phenomena accurately and consistently. Because perception is theory laden, a scientific paradigm’s core principles can be critically tested and no scientist is ever likely to observe any of problems with it; unless that paradigm is in crisis (just as no Westerners noticed sunspots until after the Copernican Revolution had already proven the heavens to be mutable). As such scientific progress is not objective.
To us past theories seem obviously flawed. At the time, however, these theories shaped what people perceived when they looked at things. People can only perceive the selected aspects of reality which are consistent with the dominant scientific framework of the time, because prior to perception their subjective mask filters out any information received from their senses which does not fit with that dominant scientific framework. As such, unless a scientific paradigm is in crisis, it is extremely unlikely that any scientist would see a problem with its core principles because they would only perceive phenomena consistent with that theory.
Theory Laden Perception
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