“The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” by TS. Kuhn.
Enormously influential book length essay about how science progresses. Kuhn describes the idea of “normal science”—the everyday activities by which scientists take incremental steps forward. For normal science to be fruitful, it must be carried out within the framework of a paradigm—a theoretical framework and set of shared commitments held by a scientific community. If no paradigm exists, or if the current paradigm is flawed, the incremental steps add up to nothing and no progress is made.
This idea is important for anyone interested in doing AI research. AI is a field without a paradigm: hundreds of papers are published every year, but do little to advance our understanding. Every serious AI researcher must confront the deep conceptual problems of the field; he must begin by articulating his own paradigm. There is little point in continuing along in the same style of research carried out by our predecessors: it leads only to esoteric branches of applied mathematics and engineering projects of questionable utility.
“The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” by TS. Kuhn.
Enormously influential book length essay about how science progresses. Kuhn describes the idea of “normal science”—the everyday activities by which scientists take incremental steps forward. For normal science to be fruitful, it must be carried out within the framework of a paradigm—a theoretical framework and set of shared commitments held by a scientific community. If no paradigm exists, or if the current paradigm is flawed, the incremental steps add up to nothing and no progress is made.
This idea is important for anyone interested in doing AI research. AI is a field without a paradigm: hundreds of papers are published every year, but do little to advance our understanding. Every serious AI researcher must confront the deep conceptual problems of the field; he must begin by articulating his own paradigm. There is little point in continuing along in the same style of research carried out by our predecessors: it leads only to esoteric branches of applied mathematics and engineering projects of questionable utility.