You're definitely right that technology isn't merely applied science and your examples illustrate that well. Technological advances sometimes happen with blind trial and error rather than any theory. But my point was that nobody would get away with talk of paradigms and incommensurability in the context of technological progress the way Kuhn gets away with it in talking about scientific progress.
And those aren't the same thing, but they are close enough that we should wonder why the rules are different.
For Kuhn paradigm shifts are shifts of largely faith, and paradigms supposedly aren't "really" better or worse than one another. Any declaration that this is so is, Kuhn insists, an anachronistic re-interpretation from within a preferred paradigm rather than an actual insight into truth.
And as the article says, Kuhn frustratingly thinks the whole question of relativism implied by his philosophy is "beside the point." Which is even more frustrating than if the charge were answered positively or negatively. Having that kind of an attitude toward truth is like a banker saying it's "beside the point" whether you have any money in your bank account.
And those aren't the same thing, but they are close enough that we should wonder why the rules are different.
For Kuhn paradigm shifts are shifts of largely faith, and paradigms supposedly aren't "really" better or worse than one another. Any declaration that this is so is, Kuhn insists, an anachronistic re-interpretation from within a preferred paradigm rather than an actual insight into truth.
And as the article says, Kuhn frustratingly thinks the whole question of relativism implied by his philosophy is "beside the point." Which is even more frustrating than if the charge were answered positively or negatively. Having that kind of an attitude toward truth is like a banker saying it's "beside the point" whether you have any money in your bank account.