Thomas Kuhn is a highly respected scholar of the 20th century and author of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
Kuhn describes a short history of the development of science in the western world.
Science is about identifying a phenomenon and using logic and reason to understand that phenomena.
An online definition of science says, quote,
the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study
of structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment.
Science can also mean a systematically organized body of knowledge on a particular subject,
for example, physics, life sciences, chemistry, and geology.
The goal of science is to explain natural phenomena by finding patterns of behavior
and using the pattern to make accurate predictions.
Science begins with observation of a phenomena.
Examples of phenomena that have fascinated scientists throughout the centuries,
the pendulum, the nature of light, the structure of matter, disease and its causes,
patterns of behavior of the sun, moon, and stars, and of course many others.
When several theories on the same theme merge, they become a paradigm.
According to the online definition, a phenomenon is a fact or situation
that is observed to exist or happen, especially one whose cause or expectation is in question,
and also an object or aspect known through the senses rather than by thought or intuition.
The quest to understand the why and how of study of phenomena triggers research
which sometimes leads to establishing scientific facts.
A fact is an irrefutable truth.
A scientific fact can be verified by observation and or experiment over and over again,
giving approximately the same result.
For example, seawater contains several dissolved salts and minerals.
Experiment heats seawater until all the liquid evaporates.
Result?
Crystalline residue of salts and minerals remain in the container.
This experiment can be repeated again and again, producing the same result.
But sometimes there are unexpected circumstance that do not fit, called anomalies.
According to an online definition, an anomaly is something that deviates from what is standard, normal, or expected.
A situation or event that arises cannot be explained within the framework of a given theory.
Anomalies are inconvenient but important because they drive research
either to confirm existing theories, discover new phenomenon, or abandon old theories to form new ones.
A simple anecdote.
A boy, Tom, grows up believing the theory his parents taught him
that all stones, when thrown into water, sink to the bottom.
One day he is on the beach and finds a stone and throws it into the sea.
To his amazement it sinks and then floats to the top.
He realizes the paradigm taught to him by his parents is shattered.
He runs home and tells his parents.
His father replies and says,
but that is what our parents and grandparents taught us.
Sorry son, we didn't know.
The theory must now be changed to
most stones when thrown into water sink to the bottom.
The rock is pumice, found on some beaches.
A light rock with a density less than water,
full of tiny holes left by escaping gases
which is thrown out of ancient active volcanoes.
It floats because it is less dense than water.
The point made here, simple as it sounds, is
theories and paradigms have to change as new knowledge is gained.
When a phenomenon is initially identified
ideas are brought together to form theories
and the theories are then tested by forming hypotheses.
Then making experiments to see if the theories are valid.
This is the nuts and bolts of science.
Theories fail because anomalies are found that do not fit the theory.
So the theory is no longer viable and must change.
Kuhn says that paradigms, quote,
are a framework containing the basic assumptions,
ways of thinking and methodology that are commonly accepted
by members of a scientific community.
A cognitive framework shared by members of any discipline or group.
He uses the term paradigm in different senses.
He calls accepted paradigms, ruling paradigms,
or grand narratives, world views,
and related terms such as paradigm change,
paradigm shift, paradigm driven,
and paradigm expectation to describe experiments
which determine the way in which experiments
are designed and interpreted.
Kuhn saw a historical pattern
in the way science develops over time.
Generations, even centuries,
and by understanding the pattern
it is possible to predict how old paradigms are abandoned
or morph into new paradigms.
He shows how to identify when old paradigms are creaking
and need to regenerate.
The list below is a summary of six stages.
Normal science, puzzle solving,
forming of paradigms,
identifying anomalies that drive research,
crisis, and revolution.
Normal science is based on the acknowledgement
of prior scientific achievements.
Puzzle solving is explaining the observations of phenomena
in terms of known science
which leads to better understanding.
A paradigm is an accepted plan,
a single group of theories
to give a rational explanation to a phenomenon or puzzle.
Anomalies are observations
that cannot be explained
within the framework of an accepted theory or paradigm.
Crisis.
All crises begin with confusion,
the blurring of a paradigm
and need to loosen the rules of normal research.
A revolution in science
changes the common worldview,
the ruling paradigm,
and the way scientists think.
Also, the related terms
paradigm and paradigm shift
widely used as from the mid-20th century onward.
But some scholars do not see the term paradigm
as adequately defined.
Ian Hacking, in his introductory essay to Coon's book,
describes the sense that Coon used the word paradigm.
Hacking says,
paradigm's quote can be read in endless ways
and put to many uses.
Coon himself admitted that he lost control of the word.
Coon's view of paradigms has been criticized in detail
by Margaret Masterman,
who claimed there are 22 different applications of the word.
In this book, the concept of paradigms
will often substitute for a variety of familiar notions.
A paradigm is a fundamental unit of scientific development,
a unit that cannot be fully reduced
to logically atomic components
which might function in its stead.
Coon cites Aristotle's analysis of motion,
Ptolemy's computations of planetary positions,
Antoine Lavossier's application of the chemical balance,
Maxwell's mathematicalization
of the electromagnetic fields as paradigms.
Exemplary instances of science
are typically to be found in books and papers.
Coon describes great texts as paradigms,
heliocentricity, geocentricity,
Ptolemy's Almagest.
Such texts contain not only the key theories and laws,
but also, and this is what makes them paradigms,
the applications of those theories
in the solution of important problems,
along with the new experimental or mathematical techniques.
According to Coon, paradigms are not a fixed
but a changing set of theories,
but a dynamic system,
a bubble of theories or ideas
with a permeable flexible skin
where the constituent theories
are continually scrutinized,
a shared constellation of beliefs,
values, and techniques
embraced by a particular community.
Beliefs, ideas, and theories
change with advancing knowledge,
so the outer skin of developing theories
must be flexible.
Richard Tarnas says,
there is an appreciation of the plasticity
and constant change of reality and knowledge,
stress on the priority of concrete experience
over fixed abstract principles,
and a conviction that no single
a priori thought system
should govern belief or investigation.
Coon describes the term revolution,
which is often associated with political revolution,
where one political ideology
overturns another, usually by force.
New discoveries may also lead
to a complete change or revolution,
for example, in the style and standard of living
and the way people think.
But there are other kinds of revolutions,
cultural, social, and scientific revolutions.
Coon sees scientific revolutions
as indicators of cultural change in belief.
Scientific revolutions
can change the way people think,
including scientists.
Some examples of scientific revolutions
are Pythagorean philosophy,
Hippocrates, the father of medicine,
Aristotelian philosophy,
Ptolemy's geocentricism,
Nicholas Coprenicus's heliocentricism,
the industrial revolution,
Pasteur's germ theory,
the communications revolution,
Morse code,
Marconi's wireless communication,
the computer revolution,
and the list goes on.
All of these brought cultural and social change,
because cultural and scientific revolutions
are interrelated, where logic and reason
demand change.
But there is a negative side to paradigm development.
If paradigms lose their flexibility,
they cannot incorporate change from the outside.
Some examples of change
by a scientist who thought outside
the existing and accepted paradigm.
In Britain, the idea of X-rays
were originally thought to be a hoax.
X-rays were discovered by accident.
They were denied to exist
by a leading scientist of the day,
Lord Thompson, because it did not fit the box.
When X-rays were to be seen as a form of light
and everything fell into place,
Thompson was thinking in terms
or rigid paradigms of his own experience,
effectively saying,
I am a leading scientist of the day,
how can I not know about this?
The discovery of wireless communication
is another example.
Marconi was only one of several scientists
working with wireless communication
at the turn of the 19th century.
But he is a well-known name
because he helped commercialize
the practical use of wireless,
receiving the Nobel Prize in 1909.
But early on he was ridiculed
by mainstream scientists of the time
for his ideas about wireless communication
over long distances around the globe.
Critics said the curve of the earth
would be a barrier that would deflect
wireless waves by the equivalent
of a wall of seawater
125 miles high.
They were wrong.
In 1903
Marconi launched a transmitter
at its own expense on a huge kite
in Cornwall, England
and transmitted a successful radio message
in Morse code to Newfoundland.
This was a revolution indeed
and a new communication paradigm
was born that changed the world.
Scientists are often wrong.
Marconi's ideas
certainly caused a rapid paradigm shift.
And by 1906
nearly all ships of the British Navy
were fitted with wireless communication.
And today
the mobile cell phones are ubiquitous.
Out with the old
and in with the new.
Louis Pasteur faced a mountain of criticism
from his own colleagues against his germ theory.
Fortunately
this made him more determined
producing more rigorous experimental procedures
and plans which demolished
the miasma paradigm.
Many thousands of lives
were saved in the 19th century alone
by doctors simply washing
their hands between dealing with each patient.
Glenn Seaborg
as a young chemist in 1944
suggested moving
five elements in the periodic table
to be with the lanthanides
below the existing periodic table.
His colleagues advised him
Glenn do not do this
you will ruin your scientific reputation.
Seaborg decided
he did not have a scientific reputation
and went ahead receiving the Nobel Prize
in 1951
for his contribution to chemistry.
People who oppose grand narratives
or ruling paradigms
are often referred to as conspiracy theorists.
A pejorative term
often leading to ridicule and rejection.
Historical figures
such as Pythagoras
Hippocrates
Claudius Ptolemy
Coprenicus Kepler
Isaac Newton and Pasteur
were all at first conspiracy theorists
exposing anomalies
devising new theories
and eventually new and better paradigms.
But when anomalies are
observed in heliocentricity
today for example
they are more often than not
dismissed, ignored, and ridiculed.
One of the main
problems with mainstream sciences
scientists become the sole
arbiters and critics of their own
paradigm beliefs and lose their flexibility.
Become
concretized making change
impossible.
Astronomy is a typical example
of a monolithic closed elite group
ignoring any other cosmological models.
Richard Tarnas
comments
to an extent never consciously recognized
by scientists
the nature of scientific practice
makes its governing paradigms self-validating.
The paradigms act
as a lens through which every
observation is filled and is
maintained as an authoritative
bulwark by convention.
Through teachers and texts
scientific pedagogy sustains
the inherited paradigms
and ratifies its credibility
tending to produce firmness of conviction
and theoretical rigidity
not unlike education
in systematic neurology.
Fixed on immovable ideas
paradigms become concretized
and this supplies it to theological
thinking.
In theology it is called dogma
for every observed fact
presupposes an interpretive
focus.
In science these conjectures
must be continually and systematically
tested.
At any time a new test
could falsify it.
One of the great difficulties of experimental
research is how the results
are interpreted. Tarnas continues
the problematic conclusion
was reinforced by the newly critical
approach to philosophy and the history
of science influenced above all
by the work of Carl Popper
and Thomas Kuhn
drawing on the insights of Hume and Kant.
Popper noted
that science can never produce knowledge
that is certain or even probable.
Man serves the universe
as a stranger making imaginative
guesses about its structure
and workings.
According to Kuhn
a paradigm is said to be complete
when there are no longer any
questions to ask.
He suggests that two paradigms in particular
may be considered to be complete
the pendulum
eventually mathematically modeled
by Isaac Newton and Newton's
optics but this is open
to debate. The danger
is when people stop asking questions
and concretization sets in.
There are however
stable paradigms such as Thomas
Young's wave theory of light
and later wave particle duality
and other fully quantitative
paradigms such as thermodynamics
with theory of light
and electromagnetic spectrum
all of which have produced
laws of science demonstrated
by making very accurate predictions.
Realistically speaking
it can be argued no paradigm
is complete and must surrender
itself to eventual adjustments
and changes.
Arguably paradigms are never
really complete because there is no
foreseen end to knowledge.
Paradigms are important
like stepping stones in pursuit of
scientific truth and must
inevitably change in order for
science to grow and move forward.
Paradigms become necessary
because eventually there is a need
to define rules and laws
in order to make predictions.
Kuhn used the term normal science
which is used to investigate anomalies
within paradigms when a paradigm
ceases to function effectively.
Without a paradigm
writing definitions, setting rules
and laws, terminology and specialist
language would be problematic.
Kuhn discusses the defining
characteristics of scientific research
seeing scientific revolution
through paradigm change.
One of the first attempts
to record and classify the sciences
was Aristotle.
Aristotle was a polymath,
a great intellectual of his day,
a philosopher, mathematician,
he wrote about politics, ethics,
medicine, astronomy,
physics and life sciences.
Aristotle expressed theories
to explain phenomena as he saw it
at the time within the confines
of knowledge that existed at the time.
The majority of Aristotle's work
written in classical Greek
has been lost and only about
one-third had survived thanks
to Arab scholars.
Arabic translations reached Western Europe
about the 12th century
and were translated into Latin,
the common language of scholars.
Scholars such as Roger Bacon
and Thomas Aquinas
helped introduce Aristotelian
philosophy into schools and
university curriculums across Europe.
Aristotle's surviving works
give insight into the ancient
Greek mindset, but also
to the 21st century mindset.
Aristotle's theories and ideas
may seem nonsense today,
but not at the time.
According to Coon, one of the reasons
Aristotle's plethora of paradigms
lasted for so long
is simply because there was nothing
better. And paradigms
change when they fail to answer
questions and when something better
comes along. But nothing better
came forward until the 17th
century when traditional Aristotelian
ideas were challenged.
Aristotle was the only text
in the philosophy of science in the West
and lasted for over 1600 years,
but change was painfully slow.
Galileo was an Aristotelian,
but was one of the first to
challenge Aristotle.
For example, Aristotle
saw the pendulum swinging
as constrained falling.
But Galileo, however,
looked at the swinging body,
saw a pendulum as a body
that almost succeeded in repeating
the same motion over and over again
ad infinitum.
The better description, of course,
came from Christian Huygens.
Finally, Isaac Newton presented
the solution as an elegant mathematical
formula which enabled the behavior
of the pendulum to be fully
explained, mathematically modeled,
and used to make accurate predictions.
Taking Hippocrates
as an example, Hippocrates
saw the human system
composed of four humours
black bile, yellow bile,
phlegm, and blood.
Humours were seen as chemical
systems regulating human
behavior, and disease
was due to a deficiency in the four
fluids being out of balance.
Sounds like a mechanic
describing the internal combustion engine,
but at the time there was nothing
else that even resembled
what is now understood to be science,
and it was all recorded and written down
for posterity, and it all made sense.
As Kuhn says,
paradigms appear to be true
at the time and make sense.
The Aristotelian and Hippocratic
paradigms endured for
1600 years, and embraced
by the greatest academic minds
of the Middle Ages, through to the age
of reason and enlightenment.
Until something better came along,
Hippocrates and Aristotle
were the only recorded paradigms they had.
But finding better paradigms
to replace them was long
and very slow.
The formation of a new paradigm
is often born of conflict,
as new knowledge from experiment
and observation arrives, more questions
arise that cannot be answered
by the existing paradigm, so the paradigm
is often ignored, giving way
to cognitive dissonance.
After all, who would dare challenge
the great Hippocrates, the father
of medicine, and Aristotle,
the godfather of evidence-based medicine,
the fountain of wisdom,
and founder of many scientific paradigms.
But both Hippocratean
and Aristotelian paradigms
fell with a great crash,
as research revealed more
knowledge and a deeper understanding
of human biology, William Harvey's
blood circulation, Edward Jenner's
inoculation against smallpox,
Louis Pasteur's germ theory,
and so many other pioneers
of medicine.
The Flogiston paradigm
asserted that all matter is made
of four elements, earth, fire,
air, and water.
A rather crude, simple, modern example
of the Flogiston theory, with a modern
twist. Take a hair comb
made of recyclable plastic
and gently and progressively heat
the comb. The comb is at first
solid, earth.
Heat the comb, and it melts to a liquid,
water. Continue to
heat it, and it becomes a gas,
air, and eventually
burns, fire.
What was left was
Flogiston ashes.
The phrenology paradigm
lasted only a few decades
at most.
Miasma is the theory that disease was caused
by bad smells.
This assertion is perhaps the most
extravagant manifestation of a belief
that prevailed in the medical
profession for much of the 19th century
and survived in some quarters
into the 20th century.
This belief held that most,
if not all, disease was
caused by inhaling air
that was infected through exposure to
corrupting matter.
Such matter might be rotting corpses,
the exhalations of other people already
infected, sewage,
or even rotting vegetation.
The miasmatical explanation
of the cause of disease figured
prominently in the long debates
among the people who are responsible for
combating the cholera epidemics
that afflicted Britain between
1831 and 1866.
The downfall
of the miasma paradigm
started with a serious outbreak of typhoid
fever in the 19th century London.
A doctor noticed
that the victims got water from the same
water pump. He reasoned
that the infection was from the water
and had nothing to do with bad smells
which was a result of poor sewage
management. Other developments
in Europe, such as Pasteur's
germ theory, after further research
and debate, the miasma paradigm
was abandoned.
At least two other medical paradigms
fell for the same reasons as a result
of observation of anomalies
leading to research and new and better
paradigms.
The discovery of how to artificially produce
insulin, the first of many hormones
to be produced. Before
artificial insulin, type 1
diabetes was a fatal disease
and most treatments were unsuccessful.
But since the 1920s
and until now, millions can enjoy
an active and full life.
A revolution in medicine based
on normal research.
The discovery of penicillin, based
on simple observation in the 1920s,
Alexander Fleming and Howard Flory
saved millions of lives of people
including World War II soldiers
on the battlefields.
Before penicillin, people could
die from simple grazes and wounds
by bacterial infection.
This is another example of a revolution
based on science research
where old paradigms are swept away
and replaced by new and better paradigms.
The Pythagoreans
were a Grecian cult who existed
in Magna Grisha, a Greek colony
on the Toa of Italy.
They believed that the whole world
including the many scientific phenomena
could be explained by rational
numbers.
A rational number is a real number
and can be expressed as an integer,
a whole number, or a fraction
for example 1, 2, 3,
negative 1,
negative 2, negative 3
or 3 quarters, 1 half, 1
5th. But the square root
of 2 is irrational
and cannot be expressed
numerically.
But the square root of 2 can be drawn
so it must exist,
but as an irrational number.
The Pythagoreans were absolutists,
rigid and immovable
and this was the reason their
paradigm crumbled.
What did the Pythagoreans do when they
recognized their fundamental beliefs
were wrong? Did they say something
like, sorry guys,
we made a mistake, but never mind
let's take it on the chin and move on?
No, they made it a secret
and anyone who told the secret
was murdered.
Such is the power of secret societies.
Hippias of Metapontum,
a Pythagorean philosopher
was drowned at sea
for breaking the Pythagorean rules
and secrecy, showing that some
numbers cannot be expressed as rational
numbers and thus exposing the
falsity of Pythagorean dogma.
Now this does not seem
a big deal in this day and age,
but it was at the time because
the Pythagoreans were rigid and
concretized in their beliefs,
embracing many absolutes
and were unable to compromise,
an attitude that still exists today
in modern astronomy.
The irrational number
was an anomaly, and anomalies
are important and should never be
ignored. The square root
of 2 must exist because it
can be drawn, but it cannot
be expressed fully in rational
numbers. Astronomers
today, who do research only
to confirm their beliefs, rather
than make new discoveries, make
the same error as the Pythagoreans.
They claim the mean distances
of planets and the sun from
Earth are absolutes.
They claim the mean distance of the sun
from Earth is 93 million miles
and make this value an absolute,
called the astronomical
unit, AU,
in which all measurements to stars,
planets and distant galaxies
are measured. But a closer study
shows this distance is
undetermined and no more than a guess.
Recall David Hume's example.
All swans are white,
but this is only true
until a swan of a different color
is found. Then the absolute
fact crumbles.
History shows that scientists
should be very careful before
declaring absolutes.
Another example is Max Müller,
who wrote a pamphlet challenging
Charles Darwin on the evolution
of human language. Darwin
called Müller a dangerous
man. Why was Müller
dangerous? Because Müller
claimed that language was
limited at the beginning and could
not develop from grunts and groans
of primitive man. This was
seen as a threat to the new
evolution paradigm.
This claim is supported by Noam Chomsky,
an American theoretical linguist
born in 1928 who argued
that a single chance mutation
occurring in one individual
in the order of 100,000 years
ago instantaneously installing
the language faculty, a component
of the mind-brain in perfect
or near-perfect form was
hard to accept or prove.
Similarly, when heliocentrists
today are confronted by
alternative models presenting
plausible evidence based
on observation and simple
experiments, they feel threatened
and react accordingly and
often retaliate with ridicule.
Beliefs deeply entrenched
in the mind have become
concretized and rigid dogma
and asking the wrong questions
undermines deeply entrenched beliefs.
Beliefs are often established
in childhood by parents or teachers
and as they grow it becomes
unchallengeable truth.
The old Jesuit saying
give me a boy until he is
seven and I will give you the man
may well be true
since the brain is soft and flexible
in the early years and early conditioning
is hard to remove.
So new ideas are always met
with suspicion and healthy skepticism.
And so it should be.
When long-standing beliefs are challenged
they nearly always encounter resistance
at a sociocultural level.
One of the problems of research
is interpretation of the results.
Experiments often conform
to the beliefs and expectations
of the experimenter
and data is evaluated
through the existing paradigm lens.
A good example is the
floggaston paradigm referred to earlier.
The ancient Greeks
believed that all matter
was made from four elements
fire, earth, air and water.
An Aristotelian paradigm
that was accepted for centuries
by the finest minds of both the ancients
and the medieval period
recast in the 17th century scientists.
But it was the element of air
that proved to be its undoing.
Floggaston was thought
to be a substance without odor,
mass or color.
When a substance burned to ash
a theoretical substance
floggaston was released.
What are now known as elemental gases
in the 17th and 18th centuries
were known as types of air.
In the 18th century
Joseph Priestley believed
he had isolated floggaston
as a pure substance.
Joseph Priestley and Henry Cavendish
both made a discovery
of something when experimenting with gases
they called them airs.
So when Henry Cavendish discovered
a combustible gas with no odor or color
and was effectively weightless
he believed he had discovered
the substance called floggaston.
Priestley discovered that
when red mercury oxide was
strongly heated it yielded
an air that was combustible.
When French chemist Anton Levasier
heard of Priestley's experiment
he was doubtful
and repeated Priestley's experiment in reverse
by heating elemental mercury
and producing mercury oxide.
In his experiment
contrary to the floggaston paradigm
which suggested that when
substances burned
substance was lost.
But Levasier's reverse experiment
showed something was gained
because the resultant product weighed more
than the original mass of mercury
so something appears to have been added.
This was the final blow
to the floggaston paradigm
which was gradually abandoned.
Kuhn suggests Levasier's
observation was a scientific revolution
that contributed to another
scientific revolution
in the understanding of the structure of matter
and the development of modern chemistry.
It was the reaction of Priestley
and Cavendish, both believers
in floggaston to Levasier's
experiment that is of great interest.
They evaluated their
experimental results in terms
of the ruling paradigm, floggaston
within the framework
of a presupposed paradigm.
Their experiments were no doubt
paradigm-driven and carried out
to conform an existing belief
assuming the belief was valid
in the first instance.
Levasier on the other hand
used a scientific methodology
that completely changed the understanding
of the nature of matter
resulting in a new paradigm
the particulate theory of matter
the belief that matter is constructed
from atoms and molecules
floggaston was swept away
whether Cavendish continued to accept
the floggaston theory is doubtful
but Joseph Priestley
showed no change and died
still embracing the belief.
This example shows how difficult it is
to dislodge ruling paradigms
that are so deeply entrenched
in the human psyche.
It also shows how the new ideas
theories and paradigms
are very difficult to establish
largely because of sociocultural
and peer pressures.
Most college courses
use inductive teaching
where the student learns from textbooks
in order to pass examinations
and assumes the textbooks are correct.
Deductive learning on the other hand
is where the students conduct experiments
and are allowed to draw their own conclusions
on the basis of the results
of their own experiments.
The problem with inductive teaching
is when new research
contradicts the textbook
the textbook becomes obsolete
and every textbook would have to be revised
and reprinted.
Kuhn comments that when a past
paradigm is repudiated
the scientific community simultaneously
renounces as a fit subject
for professional scrutiny
most of the books and articles
in which that paradigm is embodied.
Most students and their teachers
rely heavily upon the textbook
and Kuhn notes until the very last
stages in the education of a scientist
textbooks are systematically
substituted for the creative scientific
literature that made them possible.
This reinforces any
indoctrination and conditioning
the student may have been subjected to.
How is it possible
according to Kuhn
to know whether a paradigm is creaking
and needs to change?
Kuhn's answer is simple
when there are too many anomalies
this leads to crisis
and crises lead to revolution
and in turn revolution
leads to paradigm change.
Anomalies are important
and drive research.
Astronomers however
ignore embarrassing questions
as shall be seen.
Astronomers do no more research
because they believe they have found the absolute truth
and consequently
are unable to move forward
and see new perspectives.
They cannot repair the house
that is falling down
because they cannot see
blinded by their own group pride
refusing to listen
to the critics.