Embracing a new paradigm is often an emotional and social shift, not just a rational one.Scientific revolutions resemble cultural revolutions people must believe in the new paradigm before they can use it.

Conversion, Not Just Logic

Most scientific work happens within an accepted paradigm, solving "puzzles" rather than challenging fundamentals.True innovation is rare in normal science because the goal is conformity, not discovery, this maintains stability but suppresses radical ideas.

Normal Science

What scientists "see" is shaped by the theoretical framework they believe in.Observation is not neutral; it's filtered through assumptions — meaning two scientists can see the same data but interpret it differently.

Competing paradigms are incommensurable; they use different standards and language, making them hard to compare directly.Shifting paradigms is not just about evidence it’s about changing the lens through which reality is understood, often leading to miscommunication across schools of thought.

Incommensurability

A paradigm is not just a theory; it's a comprehensive worldview that dictates what is studied, how it's studied, and how results are interpreted.Changing paradigms transforms the entire intellectual environment it rewrites the rules of what counts as "truth."

Paradigms as Worldviews

Scientific progress occurs through revolutions where one paradigm replaces another.Science advances not by building on old theories, but by replacing outdated frameworks with new worldviews that redefine what is considered valid knowledge.

Paradigm Shifts

Observations that don’t fit the current paradigm are called anomalies; they build up over time.The seeds of revolution lie not in big breakthroughs but in small, repeated mismatches between theory and reality that the current paradigm cannot explain.

Scientific knowledge doesn’t just add up over time revolutions often discard previous theories entirely.Progress in science can be destructive as well as constructive — tearing down old ideas is essential to building more accurate models of nature.

Scientific Progress is Non-Cumulative

A foundational text in the philosophy and history of science. Kuhn introduces the concept of "paradigm shifts" and how scientific progress is not linear but revolutionary.

Thomas S. Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions was a watershed event when it was published in 1962, upending the previous understanding of science as a slow, logical accumulation of facts and introducing, with the concept of the “paradigm shift,” social and psychological considerations into the heart of the scientific process. More than fifty years after its publication, Kuhn’s work continues to influence thinkers in a wide range of fields, including scientists, historians, and sociologists. It is clear that The Structure of Scientific Revolutions itself marks no less of a paradigm shift than those it describes.             In Kuhn’s “Structure of Scientific Revolutions” at Fifty, leading social scientists and philosophers explore the origins of Kuhn’s masterwork and its legacy fifty years on. These essays exhume important historical context for Kuhn’s work, critically analyzing its foundations in twentieth-century science, politics, and Kuhn’s own intellectual biography: his experiences as a physics graduate student, his close relationship with psychologists before and after the publication of Structure, and the Cold War framework of terms such as “world view” and “paradigm.”

Paradigms as Worldviews

Similar ideas to Paradigms as Worldviews

What is Research Paradigm?

The cause of the 'Doorway Effect'

Managing Systems and Your Environment