Hamlet and scholarly paradigm conditioning
Insights from scientists who study paradigm shifts and scientific revolutions that might shed light on confirmation bias [1] in Shakespeare scholarship: In his famous 1963 book on scientific revolutions, Thomas Kuhn tells of an experiment where subjects were asked to view playing cards for brief, controlled amounts of time, and identify them. Many were normal; a few were “made anomalous, e.g., a red six of spades and a black four of hearts.” Some had trouble with the anomalies, but as the time to view each card increased, subjects were more able to correctly notice and identify even the anomalies. “Further increase of exposure resulted in still more hesitation and confusion until finally, and sometimes quite suddenly, most subjects would produce the correct identification without hesitation. Moreover, after doing this with two or three of the anomalous cards, they would have little further difficulty with the others.” [Most, but not all?] “A few subjects, however, were never able to ma...
