Kuhn Paradigm Shift
Kuhn Paradigm ShiftIn TheStructureOfScientificRevolutions, Kuhn argues that paradigm shifts in science have a specific path of progression. He uses several examples from the history of science to support his claim. A KuhnParadigmShift is any paradigm shift that follows this progression.
Paradigm: Originally it was an example that would fit perfectly in the theory. An example of this is a graphics library example for the ObjectOriented theory, in which all properties of ObjectOrientation can be mapped into the example and all the needs of the example can be solved using the same theory. Now Paradigm means something different: The obvious underlying assumptions of a theory, that nobody even mentions because they are so obvious and that prove to be wrong when there is a paradigm shift.
A professor of linguistics had some useful things to say on ExtremeProgramming and WikiWiki when I described them to him this week (the fact that I end up discussing them in a remote part of the UK on a short family holiday says something either significant or sad ... )
Kuhn's TheStructureOfScientificRevolutions ISBN 0226458083 has been cited briefly elsewhere on Wiki (see below). Is there an ExtremeParadigmShift?
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This page currently doesn't really describe what a Kuhn paradigm shift is, but using it as a reverse index will turn up some good pages whose scattered descriptions should give you the gist of what makes a Kuhn paradigm shift.
I don't believe in KuhnParadigmShifts. Scientists routinely change their ideas about the world; sometimes the changes are big ("There's no absolute frame of reference!"), sometimes small ("Metabolic pathways aren't controlled by a single rate-limiting enzyme after all."); Kuhn says that there is a qualitative difference between small and large changes, and i just don't see that. To me, there's a PowerLaw distribution of changes, and there have been few enough of the really big changes that they look special. But then, i'm just a scientist, not a philosopher. -- TomAnderson
I think the primary usefulness of the KuhnParadigmShift concept is that it helps to explain why tensions and arguments occur over 'fundamental differences' in science and other endeavours. If you're failing to communicate with someone who doesn't 'get' what you're talking about, and you're wondering why all the trouble, the KuhnParadigmShift might help explain what's going on. If you're wondering why some ancient scientists were persecuted for what we would today call 'common sense', KuhnParadigmShift helps explain it. It also helps explain the TechnologyAdoptionLifeCycle and CrossingTheChasm, which I find fascinating.
Indeed, not all scientists are strictly scientific all the time. Some refuse to abandon personal theories no matter what evidence is presented and thus science sometimes progresses one funeral at a time.
For Kuhn, the resistance of scientists against new paradigms and the process that occurs when science is finally forced to discard a paradigm are not indicative of bad science: they are indicative of all science, even (especially?) good science. Kuhn thinks that the system we have, which involves a cycle of new paradigms, incremental change, growing problems, and finally upheaval followed by new paradigms again, is so successful because it is highly tuned. If scientists were to act like KarlPopper thinks they should and throw out a theory as soon as there is evidence to falsify it, science would never get anywhere. It takes solid paradigms in order to conduct "normal science" well, and since most science is just normal science, there is necessarily a large amount of upheval when the context of all research done in a field over the course of decades is thrown into question. For Kuhn, paradigms and paradigm shifts are science.
As for Kuhn's differentiation between small and large changes, it's really a differentiation between small and large theories. The difference is that small theories can be falsified whereas large theories cannot. Ptolemaic astronomy is probably the textbook example of a "large theory" in this sense: you can keep AddingEpicycles forever and improving your results, and as long as you stay on Earth there is no evidence that can disconfirm your theory. This is why it takes a special kind of change to unseat a large theory. Small theories pop up all the time and vanish just as quickly, and generally can be directly tested, unlike large theories. The proposed existence of Neptune to account for orbital discrepancies, say, is an example of a small theory.
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