Kuhn didn't exactly recant, but after someone pointed out that he
had used "paradigm" in - count 'em - twenty-nine different senses
in his original essay, he issued a revision in which he offered,
as an alternative to paradigm, a slightly more operational idea
called a "disciplinary matrix." It was composed for four
categories: "symbolic generalizations" - the way a field expresses
its basic findings; "metaphysical assumptions" - what the field
takes for granted about the nature of reality; "values" - what a
field considers important; and "exemplars" - the individuals and
the kinds of work that are taken to be models of "good work"
within the matrix.
The other thing is that as of the 1970's and early 1980's, Kuhn
seems to have disapproved of the way the social sciences were
jumping on his paradigm idea, because he considered them in a
"pre-paradigm" phase. His matrix helps understand why he might
look at say, psychology, and conclude that it is not crystallized
enough to be able to say what its paradigm is.
While I am at it, here is a quote of Kuhn's I have always
considered quite significant for the social sciences (he's talking
about the metaphysical assumption in the natural sciences'
paradigms that reality is "out there" waiting to be measured
exactly):
"But is sensory experience fixed and neutral? Are theories
simply man-made interpretations of given data? The epistemological
viewpoint that has most often guided Western philosophy for three
centuries dictates an immediate and unequivocal Yes! In the
absence of a developed alternative, I find it impossible to
relinquish entirely that viewpoint. Yet it no longer functions
effectively, and attempts to make it do so through the
introduction of a neutral language of observations now seem to me
hopeless." (p. 126, 2nd edition).
I note in the current Atlantic the socio-biologist, E.O. Wilson,
seems to have taken another crack at envisioning an objective
unity of science. Haven't read it yet, though.
Peter