ABOUT THOMAS KUHN

Thomas Samuel Kuhn was an American physicist and philosopher who wrote extensively on

the history of science and developed several important notions in the sociology and philosophy

of science.

Kuhn was born in Cincinnati, Ohio to Samuel L. Kuhn, an industrial engineer, and Minette

Stroock Kuhn. He obtained his B.Sc. degree in physics from Harvard University in 1943,

and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in physics in 1946 and 1949, respectively. He later taught a course

in the history of science at Harvard from 1948 until 1956 at the suggestion of the University

president James Conant. After leaving Harvard, Kuhn taught at the University of California,

Berkeley, in both the philosophy department and the history department, being named „Professor

of the History of Science’ in 1961. At Berkeley, he wrote and published (in 1962) his best known

and most influential work: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

Thomas Samuel Kuhn (1922-1996) became one of the most influential philosophers of science

of the twentieth century, perhaps the most influential—his The Structure of Scientific

Revolutions is one of the most cited academic books of all time. His contribution to the

philosophy of science marked not only a break with several key positivist doctrines but also

inaugurated a new style of philosophy of science that brought it much closer to the history of

science. His account of the development of science held that science enjoys periods of stable

growth punctuated by revisionary revolutions, to which he added the controversial

‘incommensurability thesis’, that theories from differing periods suffer from certain deep kinds

of failure of comparability.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF SCIENCE

In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions Kuhn painted a picture of the development of science

quite unlike any that had been done before. Indeed, before Kuhn, there was little by way of a

carefully considered, theoretically explained account of scientific change. Instead, there was a

conception of how science ought to develop that was a by-product of the prevailing philosophy

of science, as well as a popular, heroic view of scientific progress. According to such opinions,

science develops by the addition of new truths to the stock of old truths, or the increasing

approximation of theories to the truth, and in the odd case, the correction of past errors. Such

progress might accelerate in the hands of a particularly great scientist, but progress itself is

guaranteed by the scientific method.

According to Kuhn the development of a science is not uniform but has alternating „normal‟ and

„revolutionary‟ (or „extraordinary‟) phases. The revolutionary phases are not merely periods of

accelerated progress, but differ qualitatively from normal science. Normal science does resemble

the standard cumulative picture of scientific progress, on the surface at least. Kuhn describes

normal science as puzzle-solving. While this term suggests that normal science is not dramatic,

its main purpose is to convey the idea that like someone doing crossword puzzles or chess

puzzles or jigsaws, the puzzle-solver expects to have a reasonable chance of solving the puzzle,

that his doing so will depends mainly on his own ability, and that the puzzle itself and its

methods of solution will have a high degree of familiarity.

Paradigm shift (or revolutionary science) is the term used by Thomas Kuhn in his influential

book „The Structure of Scientific Revolutions‟ to describe a change in the basic assumptions,

or paradigms, within the ruling theory of science. It is in contrast to his idea of normal science.

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (SSR) was originally printed as an article in

The International Encyclopedia of Unified Science, published by the logical positivists of

the Vienna Circle. In this book, Kuhn argued that science does not progress via a linear

accumulation of new knowledge, but undergoes periodic revolutions, also called "paradigm

shifts" (although he did not coin the phrase), in which the nature of scientific inquiry within a

particular field is abruptly transformed.

In general, science is broken up into three distinct stages. „Prescience’, which lacks a central

paradigm, comes first. This is followed by „normal science’, when scientists attempt to enlarge

the central paradigm by „puzzle-solving‟. Guided by the paradigm, normal science is extremely

productive: "when the paradigm is successful, the profession will have solved problems that its

members could scarcely have imagined and would never have undertaken without commitment

to the paradigm." If much of normal science relies upon a piece of equipment, normal science

will find it difficult to continue with confidence until an anomaly is addressed. A widespread

failure in such confidence Kuhn calls a „crisis‟. The most interesting response to crisis will be

the search for a revised disciplinary matrix, a revision that will allow for the elimination of at

least the most pressing anomalies and optimally the solution of many outstanding and unsolved

puzzles. Such a revision will be a scientific revolution.

According to Kuhn, "A paradigm is what members of a scientific community, and they alone,

share." Unlike a normal scientist, Kuhn held, "a student in the humanities has constantly before

him a number of competing and incommensurable solutions to these problems, solutions that he

must ultimately examine for himself" (The Structure of Scientific Revolutions). Once a paradigm

shift is complete, a scientist cannot, for example, reject the germ theory of disease to posit the

possibility that miasma causes disease or reject modern physics and optics to posit

that ether carries light. In contrast, a critic in the Humanities can choose to adopt an array of

stances, which may be more or less fashionable during any given period but which are all

regarded as legitimate.

THE PARADIGM CONCEPT

In 1962, Thomas Kuhn wrote „The Structure of Scientific Revolution‟, and fathered,

defined and popularized the concept of "paradigm shift". Kuhn argued that scientific

advancement is not evolutionary, but rather is a "series of peaceful interludes punctuated by

intellectually violent revolutions", and in those revolutions "one conceptual world view is

replaced by another".

Think of a Paradigm Shift as a change from one way of thinking to another. It's a revolution, a

transformation, a sort of metamorphosis. It just does not happen, but rather it is driven by agents

of change. For example, agriculture changed early primitive society. The primitive Indians

existed for centuries roaming the earth constantly hunting and gathering for seasonal foods and

water. However, by 2000 B.C., Middle America was a landscape of very small villages, each

surrounded by patchy fields of corn and other vegetables.

Agents of change helped create a paradigm-shift moving scientific theory from the Plolemaic

system (the earth at the center of the universe) to the Copernican system (the sun at the center of

the universe), and moving from Newtonian physics to Relativity and Quantum Physics. Both

movements eventually changed the world view. These transformations were gradual as old

beliefs were replaced by the new paradigms creating "a new gestalt".

Likewise, the printing press, the making of books and the use of vernacular language inevitably

changed the culture of people and had a direct affect on the scientific revolution. Johann

Gutenberg's invention in the 1440's of movable type was an agent of change. Books became

readily available, smaller and easier to handle and cheap to purchase. Masses of people acquired

direct access to the scriptures. Attitudes began to change as people were relieved from church

domination.

Similarly, agents of change are driving a new paradigm shift today. The signs are all around us.

For example, the introduction of the personal computer and the internet have impacted both

personal and business environments, and is a catalyst for a Paradigm Shift. Newspaper

publishing has been reshaped into Web sites, blogging, and web feeds. The Internet has enabled

or accelerated the creation of new forms of human interactions through instant messaging,

Internet forums, and social networking sites. We are shifting from a mechanistic, manufacturing,

industrial society to an organic, service based, information centered society, and increases in

technology will continue to impact globally. Change is inevitable.

A mature science, according to Kuhn, experiences alternating phases of normal science and

revolutions. In normal science, the key theories, instruments, values and metaphysical

assumptions that comprise the disciplinary matrix are kept fixed, permitting the cumulative

generation of puzzle-solutions, whereas in a scientific revolution the disciplinary matrix

undergoes revision, in order to permit the solution of the more serious anomalous puzzles that

disturbed the preceding period of normal science.

A particularly important part of Kuhn's thesis in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions focuses

upon one specific component of the disciplinary matrix. This is the consensus on exemplary

instances of scientific research. These exemplars of good science are what Kuhn refers to when

he uses the term „paradigm‟ in a narrower sense. He cites Aristotle's analysis of motion,

Ptolemy's computations of plantery positions, Lavoisier's application of the balance, and

Maxwell's mathematization of the electromagnetic field as paradigms. Exemplary instances of

science are typically to be found in books and papers, and so Kuhn often also describes great

texts as paradigms—Ptolemy's Almagest, Lavoisier's Traité élémentaire de chimie, and

Newton's Principia Mathematica and Opticks . Such texts contain not only the key theories and

laws, but—and this is what makes them paradigms—the applications of those theories in the

solution of important problems, along with the new experimental or mathematical techniques

employed in those applications.

In the postscript to the second edition of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions Kuhn says of

paradigms in this sense that they are “the most novel and least understood aspect of this book”.

Kuhn describes an immature science, in what he sometimes calls its „pre-paradigm‟ period, as

lacking consensus. Competing schools of thought possess differing procedures, theories, even

metaphysical presuppositions. Consequently there is little opportunity for collective progress.

Even localized progress by a particular school is made difficult, since much intellectual energy is

put into arguing over the fundamentals with other schools instead of developing a research

tradition. However, progress is not impossible, and one school may make a breakthrough

whereby the shared problems of the competing schools are solved in a particularly impressive

fashion. This success draws away adherents from the other schools, and a widespread consensus

is formed around the new puzzle-solutions.

This widespread consensus now permits agreement on fundamentals. For a problem-solution will

embody particular theories, procedures and instrumentation, scientific language, metaphysics,

and so forth. Consensus on the puzzle-solution will thus bring consensus on these other aspects

of a disciplinary matrix also. The successful puzzle-solution, now a paradigm puzzle-solution,

will not solve all problems. Indeed, it will probably raise new puzzles. For example, the theories

it employs may involve a constant whose value is not known with precision; the paradigm

puzzle-solution may employ approximations that could be improved; it may suggest other

puzzles of the same kind; it may suggest new areas for investigation. Generating new puzzles is

one thing that the paradigm puzzle-solution does; helping solve them is another. In the best case,

the new puzzles raised by the paradigm puzzle-solution can be addressed and answered using

precisely the techniques that the paradigm puzzle-solution employs.

Kuhn rejected the distinction between the context of discovery and the context of justification,

and correspondingly rejected the standard account of each. As regards the context of discovery,

the standard view held that the philosophy of science had nothing to say on the issue of the

functioning of the creative imagination. But Kuhn's paradigms do provide a partial explanation,

since training with exemplars enables scientists to see new puzzle-situations in terms of familiar

puzzles and hence enables them to see potential solutions to their new puzzles.

USE OF THE TERM IN NON-SCIENTIFIC CONTEXT

Since the 1960s, the term „paradigm shift‟ has also been used in numerous non-scientific

contexts to describe a profound change in a fundamental model or perception of events, even

though Kuhn himself restricted the use of the term to the hard sciences.

A scientific revolution occurs, according to Kuhn, when scientists encounter anomalies which

cannot be explained by the universally accepted paradigm within which scientific progress has

thereto been made. The paradigm, in Kuhn's view, is not simply the current theory, but the entire

world view in which it exists, and all of the implications which come with it. It is based on

features of landscape of knowledge that scientists can identify around them. There are anomalies

for all paradigms, Kuhn maintained, that are brushed away as acceptable levels of error, or

simply ignored and not dealt with. Rather, according to Kuhn, anomalies have various levels of

significance to the practitioners of science at the time. To put it in the context of early 20th

century physics, some scientists found the problems with calculating Mercury's perihelion more

troubling than the Michelson-Morley experiment results, and some the other way around. Kuhn's

model of scientific change differs here, and in many places, from that of the logical positivists in

that it puts an enhanced emphasis on the individual humans involved as scientists, rather than

abstracting science into a purely logical or philosophical venture.

When enough significant anomalies have accrued against a current paradigm, the scientific

discipline is thrown into a state of crisis, according to Kuhn. During this crisis, new ideas,

perhaps ones previously discarded, are tried. Eventually a new paradigm is formed, which gains

its own new followers, and an intellectual "battle" takes place between the followers of the new

paradigm and the hold-outs of the old paradigm. Again, for early 20th century physics, the

transition between the Maxwellian electromagnetic worldview and the Einsteinian Relativistic

worldview was neither instantaneous nor calm, and instead involved a protracted set of "attacks,"

both with empirical data as well as rhetorical or philosophical arguments, by both sides, with the

Einsteinian theory winning out in the long-run. Again, the weighing of evidence and importance

of new data was fit through the human sieve: some scientists found the simplicity of Einstein's

equations to be most compelling, while some found them more complicated than the notion of

Maxwell's other idea which they banished. Some found Eddington's photographs of light bending

around the sun to be compelling, some questioned their accuracy and meaning.

Sometimes the convincing force is just time itself and the human toll it takes, Kuhn said, using a

quote from Max Planck: "a new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its

opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die,

and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."

After a given discipline has changed from one paradigm to another, this is called, in Kuhn's

terminology, a scientific revolution or a paradigm shift. It is often this final conclusion, the result

of the long process that is meant when the term paradigm shift is used colloquially: simply the

(often radical) change of worldview, without reference to the specificities of Kuhn's historical

argument.

MISINTERPRETATIONS OF PARADIGM SHIFT

A common misinterpretation of paradigms is the belief that the discovery of paradigm shifts and

the dynamic nature of science (with its many opportunities for subjective judgments by

scientists) is a case for relativism: the view that all kinds of belief systems are equal, such

that magic, religious concepts or pseudoscience would be of equal working value to

truescience. Kuhn vehemently denied this interpretation and states that when a scientific

paradigm is replaced by a new one, albeit through a complex social process, the new one

is always better, not just different.

These claims of relativism are, however, tied to another claim that Kuhn did at least somewhat

endorse: that the language and theories of different paradigms cannot be translated into one

another or rationally evaluated against one another — that they are incommensurable. This gave

rise to much talk of different peoples and cultures having radically different worldviews or

conceptual schemes — so different that whether or not one was better, they could not be

understood by one another. However, the philosopher Donald Davidson published a highly

regarded essay in 1974, "On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme," arguing that the notion

that any languages or theories could be incommensurable with one another was itself incoherent.

If this is correct, Kuhn's claims must be taken in a weaker sense than they often are.

Furthermore, the hold of the Kuhnian analysis on social science has long been tenuous with the

wide application of multi-paradigmatic approaches in order to understand complex human

behavior.

Paradigm shifts tend to be most dramatic in sciences that appear to be stable and mature, as in

physics at the end of the 19th century. At that time, physics seemed to be a discipline filling in

the last few details of a largely worked-out system. In 1900, Lord Kelvin famously stated, "There

is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise

measurement." Five years later, Albert Einstein published his paper on special relativity, which

challenged the very simple set of rules laid down by Newtonian mechanics, which had been used

to describe force and motion for over two hundred years.

In „The Structure of Scientific Revolutions‟, Kuhn wrote, "Successive transition from one

paradigm to another via revolution is the usual developmental pattern of mature science."

Kuhn's idea was itself revolutionary in its time, as it caused a major change in the way that

academics talk about science. Thus, it could be argued that it caused or was itself part of a

"paradigm shift" in the history and sociology of science. However, Kuhn did not recognize such

a paradigm shift. Being in the social sciences, people can still use earlier ideas to discuss the

history of science.

Philosophers and historians of science, including Kuhn himself, ultimately accepted a modified

version of Kuhn's model, which synthesizes his original view with the gradualist model that

preceded it. Kuhn's original model is now generally seen as too limited.

EXAMPLES OF PARADIGM SHIFT IN NATURAL SCIENCES

Some of the "classical cases" of Kuhnian paradigm shifts in science are:

The transition in cosmology from a Ptolemaic cosmology to a Copernican one.

The transition in optics from geometrical optics to physical optics.

The transition in mechanics from Aristotelian mechanics to classical mechanics.

The acceptance of the theory of biogenesis, that all life comes from life, as opposed to the

theory of spontaneous generation which began in the 17th century and was not complete until

the 19th century with Pasteur.

The transition between the Maxwellian Electromagnetic worldview and the Einsteinian

Relativistic worldview.

The transition between the worldview of Newtonian physics and

the Einsteinian Relativistic worldview.

The acceptance of Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection replaced Lamarckism as the

mechanism for evolution.

EXAMPLES OF PARADIGM SHIFT IN SOCIAL SCIENCES

In Kuhn's view, the existence of a single reigning paradigm is characteristic of the sciences,

while philosophy and much of social science were characterized by a "tradition of claims,

counterclaims, and debates over fundamentals." Others have applied Kuhn's concept of paradigm

shift to the social sciences.

The movement, known as the Cognitive revolution, away from Behaviourist approaches

to psychological study and the acceptance of cognition as central to studying human

behaviour.

The Keynesian Revolution is typically viewed as a major shift in

macroeconomics. According to John Kenneth Galbraith, Say's Law dominated economic

thought prior to Keynes for over a century, and the shift to Keynesianism was difficult.

Economists who contradicted the law, which inferred that underemployment and

underinvestment (coupled with oversaving) were virtually impossible, risked losing their

careers. In his magnum opus, Keynes cited one of his predecessors, J. A. Hobson, who was

repeatedly denied positions at universities for his heretical theory.

Later, the movement for Monetarism over Keynesianism marked a second divisive shift.

Monetarists held that fiscal policy was not effective for stabilizing inflation, that it was solely

a monetary phenomenon, in contrast to the Keynesian view of the time was that both fiscal

and monetary policies were important. Keynesians later adopted much of the Monetarists

view of the quantity theory of money and shifting Philips curve, theories they initially

rejected.

OTHER USES

The term "paradigm shift" has found uses in other contexts, representing the notion of a major

change in a certain thought-pattern — a radical change in personal beliefs, complex systems or

organizations, replacing the former way of thinking or organizing with a radically different way

of thinking or organizing.

IMPACT OF KUHN’S WORK

The enormous impact of Kuhn's work can be measured in the changes it brought about in the

vocabulary of the philosophy of science: besides "paradigm shift", Kuhn raised the word

"paradigm" itself from a term used in certain forms of linguistics to its current broader meaning,

coined the term "normal science" to refer to the relatively routine, day-to-day work of scientists

working within a paradigm, and was largely responsible for the use of the term "scientific

revolutions" in the plural, taking place at widely different periods of time and in different

disciplines, as opposed to a single "Scientific Revolution" in the late Renaissance. The frequent

use of the phrase "paradigm shift" has made scientists more aware of and in many cases more

receptive to paradigm changes, so that Kuhn‟s analysis of the evolution of scientific views has by

itself influenced that evolution.

Kuhn's work has been extensively used in social science; for instance, in the post-

positivist/positivist debate within International Relations. Kuhn was credited as a foundational

force behind the post-Mertonian Sociology of Scientific Knowledge.

A defense Kuhn gives against the objection that his account of science from The Structure of

Scientific Revolutions results in relativism can be found in an essay by Kuhn called "Objectivity,

Value Judgment, and Theory Choice." In this essay, he reiterates five criteria from the

penultimate chapter of SSR that determine (or help determine, more properly) theory choice:

1. - Accurate - empirically adequate with experimentation and observation

2. - Consistent - internally consistent, but also externally consistent with other theories

3. - Broad Scope - a theory's consequences should extend beyond that which it was initially

designed to explain

4. - Simple - the simplest explanation, principally similar to Occam's razor

5. - Fruitful - a theory should disclose new phenomena or new relationships among

phenomena

He then went on to show how, although these criteria admittedly determine theory choice, they

are imprecise in practice and relative to individual scientists. According to Kuhn, "When

scientists must choose between competing theories, two men fully committed to the same

list of criteria for choice may nevertheless reach different conclusions." For this reason,

basically, the criteria still are not "objective" in the usual sense of the word because individual

scientists reach different conclusions with the same criteria due to valuing one criterion over

another or even adding additional criteria for selfish or other subjective reasons. Kuhn then goes

on to say, "I am suggesting, of course, that the criteria of choice with which I began function

not as rules, which determine choice, but as values, which influence it." Because Kuhn

utilizes the history of science in his account of science, his criteria or values for theory choice are

often understood as descriptive normative rules (or more properly, values) of theory choice for

the scientific community rather than prescriptive normative rules in the usual sense of the word

"criteria," although there are many varied interpretations of Kuhn's account of science.

THE POLANYI-KUHN DEBATE

Although they used different terminologies, both Kuhn and Michael Polanyi believed that

scientists' subjective experiences made science a relativistic discipline. Polanyi lectured on this

topic for decades before Kuhn published "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions."

Supporters of Polanyi charged Kuhn with plagiarism, as it was known that Kuhn attended several

of Polanyi's lectures, and that the two men had debated endlessly over the epistemology of

science before either had achieved fame. In response to these critics, Kuhn cited Polanyi in the

second edition of "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions," and the two scientists agreed to set

aside their differences in the hopes of enlightening the world to the dynamic nature of science.

Despite this intellectual alliance, Polanyi's work was constantly interpreted by others within the

framework of Kuhn's paradigm shifts, much to Polanyi's (and Kuhn's) dismay.

HONOURS

Kuhn was named a Guggenheim Fellow in 1954, and in 1982 was awarded the George Sarton

Medal by the History of Science Society. He was also awarded numerous honorary doctorates.

HISTORY OF SCIENCE

Kuhn's historical work covered several topics in the history of physics and astronomy. During

the 1950s his focus was primarily on the early theory of heat and the work of Sadie Carnot.

However, his first book concerned the Copernican revolution in planetary astronomy (1957).

This book grew out of the teaching he had done on James Conant's General Education in Science

curriculum at Harvard but also presaged some of the ideas of The Structure of Scientific

Revolutions. In detailing the problems with the Ptolemaic system and Copernicus‟ solution to

them, Kuhn showed two things. First, he demonstrated that Aristotelian science was genuine

science and that those working within that tradition, in particular those working on Ptolemaic

astronomy, were engaged in an entirely reasonable and recognizably scientific project. Secondly,

Kuhn showed that Copernicus was himself far more indebted to that tradition than had typically

been recognized. Thus the popular view that Copernicus was a modern scientist who overthrew

an unscientific and long-outmoded viewpoint is mistaken both by exaggerating the difference

between Copernicus and the Ptolemaic astronomers and in underestimating the scientific

credentials of work carried out before Copernicus. This mistaken view—a product of the

distortion caused by our current state of knowledge—can be rectified only by seeing the

activities of Copernicus and his predecessors in the light of the puzzles presented to them by

tradition that they inevitably had to work with.

CRITICISM AND INFLUENCE

Kuhn's work met with a largely critical reception among philosophers. That criticism has largely

focussed on two areas. First, it has been argued that Kuhn's account of the development of

science is not entirely accurate. Secondly, critics have attacked Kuhn's notion of

incommensurability, arguing that either it does not exist or, if it does exist, it is not a significant

problem. Despite this criticism, Kuhn's work has been hugely influential, both within philosophy

and outside it.

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, for millions of years we have been evolving and will continue to do so. Change is

difficult. Human Beings resist change; however, the process has been set in motion long ago and

we will continue to co-create our own experience. Kuhn states that "awareness is prerequisite to

all acceptable changes of theory". It all begins in the mind of the person. What we perceive,

whether normal or metanormal, conscious or unconscious, are subject to the limitations and

distortions produced by our inherited and socially conditional nature. However, we are not

restricted by this for we can change. We are moving at an accelerated rate of speed and our state

of consciousness is transforming and transcending. Many are awakening as our conscious

awareness expands.