The quotes that we used with Durkheim today provided a lot of thought provoking discussion on the similarities between Durkheim and Kuhn.
Durkheim believes science and religion have the same goal to establish a relationship between things; however, he believes science is the more perfected form of religion in this aspect. During the time we separated into groups, my group could not sense what exactly separated science from religion for Durkheim. The two factors that we conversed about were collective passion and critical spirit. Yet, both religion and science seem to have these traits. Personally, I think that though both have these traits, science differs from religion because it is more critical and has less collective passion. This answer does not suit me well, but it is the best answer that I found during our discussion.
Kuhn does not mention religion in “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.” Instead, we can only compare Durkheim’s and Kuhn’s idea of how science impacts society. The starkest difference between the two’s idea of science involved the collective aspect of science. Durkheim seems to think that the collective is objective. Every one is connected in some way as a society, and this is objectively true. Kuhn has a different approach in that he thinks the collective is more of a social agreement, not objective. He seems critical of the idea of objectivity and searches to find if there is anything in the world that can produce the objective.