Everything about Paradigm Shift totally explained
Paradigm shift, sometimes known as
extraordinary science or
revolutionary science, is the term first used by
Thomas Kuhn in his influential
1962 book
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions to describea change in basic assumptions within the ruling
theory of
science. It is in contrast to his idea of
normal science.
It has since become widely applied to many other realms of human experience as well even though Kuhn himself restricted the use of the term to the hard sciences. According to Kuhn, "A paradigm is what members of a scientific community, and they alone, share.” (The Essential Tension, 1997). 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). A scientist, however, once a paradigm shift is complete, isn't allowed the luxury, for example, of positing the possibility that
miasma causes the flu or that
ether carries light in the same way that a critic in the Humanities can choose to adopt a 19th century theory of poetics, for instance, or select Marxism as an explanation of economic behaviour. Thus, paradigms, in the sense that Kuhn used them, don't exist in Humanities or social sciences. Nonetheless, the term has been adopted since the 1960s and applied in non-scientific contexts.
Kuhnian paradigm shifts
An
epistemological paradigm shift was called a
scientific revolution by epistemologist and
historian of science Thomas Kuhn in his book
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
A scientific revolution occurs, according to Kuhn, when scientists encounter anomalies which can't be explained by the universally accepted
paradigm within which scientific progress has thereto been made. The paradigm, in Kuhn's view, isn't simply the current theory, but the entire
worldview in which it exists, and all of the implications which come with it. There are anomalies for all paradigms, Kuhn maintained, that are brushed away as acceptable levels of error, or simply ignored and not dealt with (a principal argument Kuhn uses to reject
Karl Popper's model of
falsifiability as the key force involved in scientific change). 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 wasn't 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 aether 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 doesn't 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's 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's 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.
Science and 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 true
science. Kuhn vehemently denies 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 does at least somewhat endorse: that the language and theories of different paradigms can't be translated into one another or rationally evaluated against one another — that they're
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 couldn't 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 behaviour (see for example John Hassard,
Sociology and Organisation Theory. Positivism, Paradigm and Postmodernity. Cambridge University Press. 1993.)
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 three hundred years. In this case, the new paradigm reduces the old to a special case (Newtonian mechanics is an excellent approximation for speeds that are slow compared to the speed of light).
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." (p.12) 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 caused or was itself part of a "paradigm shift" in the history and sociology 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 shifts in science
Some of the "classical cases" of Kuhnian paradigm shifts in science are:
Examples of paradigm shifts in complex systems and organizations
The English monarchy with the signing of Magna Carta.
The "explosion of life" marking the beginning of the Cambrian period.
Society with the invention of any of several innovations (fire, the wheel, gunpowder, the microchip, etc.).
Warfare with the development of the airplane.
Communication after the invention of the World Wide Web.
As marketing speak
In the later part of the 1990's, 'paradigm shift' emerged as a buzzword, popularized as marketing speak and appearing more frequently in print and publication. In his book, Mind The Gaffe, author Larry Trask advises readers to refrain from using it, and to use caution when reading anything that contains the phrase. It is referred to in several articles and books as abused and overused to the point of becoming meaningless.
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:
Handa, M. L., a professor of sociology in education at O.S.E. University of Toronto, Canada, developed the concept of a paradigm within the context of social sciences. He defines what he means by "paradigm" and introduces the idea of a "social paradigm". In addition, he identifies the basic component of any social paradigm. Like Kuhn, he addresses the issue of changing paradigms, the process popularly known as "paradigm shift." In this respect, he focuses on the social circumstances which precipitate such a shift. Relatedly, he addresses how that shift affects social institutions, including the institution of education.
The concept has been developed in economics (Giovanni Dosi) in the identification of new techno-economic paradigms as changes in technological systems that have a major influence on the behaviour of the entire economy. This concept is linked to Schumpeter's idea of "creative gales of destruction". Examples include the move to mass production, and the introduction of microelectronics.
The mainstream availability in the U.S. of the female birth control pills in the 1960's, combined with effective new treatments for venereal diseases, led to the Sexual Revolution that accompanied many other shifts in attitudes and ideas during that period.
A widely distributed picture of the Earth entitled "Earthrise" taken from the moon by astronauts is thought by some to have deeply affected the consciousness of humanity in helping to usher in the environmentalist movement which gained great prominence in the years immediately following distribution of that image.
Margaret Mead, noted anthropologist, shows a flashlight to the indigenous New Guinea people.
Development of new techniques in genetics impact long-standing assumptions in anthropology.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Paradigm Shift'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://paradigm_shift.totallyexplained.com">Paradigm shift Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
