Paul Hoyningen-huene Context of Discovery versus Context of Justification and Thomas Kuhn

Let me begin with a convention. I will refer to the distinction between the context of discovery and the context of justification as “the DJ distinction” (where I may note, for potentially misled younger readers, that this “DJ” has nothing to do with the music business). This paper is based on an older paper of mine (Hoyningen-Huene 1987). In the present paper, I will first recapitulate some of the topics of the older paper, and will contribute further considerations. Subsequently, I will discuss Thomas Kuhn’s ideas about justification in science. Thus will be clarified, in which sense precisely Kuhn opposed the DJ distinction. This is noteworthy, because in the 1960s and 1970s, many philosophers concluded from Kuhn’s opposition to the context distinction that he just did not understand what it was all about (and they inferred from this that he was just too uneducated as a philosopher to be taken seriously). My general line will be this: The DJ distinction, as it was used in the 1960s and 1970s, is not just one distinction, but a set of intermingled distinctions. Due to the conflation of various distinctions, the assertion of the DJ distinction contains hidden identity statements among these distinctions. This identification results in massive philosophical assumptions that are highly problematic. As a consequence, much of the discussion of the DJ distinction in the 1960s and 1970s is fairly muddled, because it is not clear what exactly is stated by its defenders and what exactly is attacked by its critics. Eventually, all parties, growing frustrated, turned away from the discussion. Earlier historical details of the DJ distinction will be provided in other chapters of this book. In section2, Iwill discuss the varieties of theDJdistinction.Then, Iwill demonstrate how these distinctions incorporate several hidden assumptions (section 3). In section 4, I will present Kuhn’s somewhat opaque criticism of the DJ distinction as it was formulated in his 1962 The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Section 5 is devoted to Kuhn’s positive views about justification in science. In the final section, I shall present a rejuvenated DJ distinction that might be acceptable to all parties.