Wittgenstein, Hanson, and Kuhn: From Aspect Dawning to Practical Articulation

When Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations was published in 1953, one part of it that attracted the attention of several philosophers of science was his discussion of “seeing as” or “aspect perception”. N.R. Hanson and Thomas Kuhn are two main examples of the impact this had in the philosophy of science. In this paper we focus on a specific side of Wittgenstein’s discussion and its reception, namely his treatment of “aspect dawning”, which we distinguish from less open and less creative forms of aspect perception. As both Hanson and Kuhn note, transformative changes in science often start by new aspects of phenomena dawning on scientists, i.e., first coming into view and acquiring significance. To be fully effective, thus leading to new ways of “making sense” of things, those aspects then need to be “articulated”, i.e., expressed more fully in words, tied to scientific practice, and their conceptual structure elaborated systematically. While Hanson sheds light on the linguistic and conceptual sides of such articulation, via his treatment of scientific observation, Kuhn adds to the practical side, by providing an account of scientific problem solving and the central role of “exemplars” in it.