Kuhn's Alternative Path: Science and the Social Resistance to Criticism

One of Thomas Kuhn's most important contributions to the epistemology of science has been overlooked and underanalyzed. Specifically, Kuhn was one of the first to approach the philosophy of science by examining the dynamics of scientific communities. I will show how this approach is vital to the epistemology of science by showing how two dynamics that Kuhn discusses, shared tacit knowledge and professional hierarchies, directly bear on Popper's epistemic thesis that the possibility of criticism is the crucial feature of science. Without this methodological shift, the potential social hindrances to science being a critical enterprise remain beyond the scope of our philosophies.