Paradigm shift

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A paradigm shift is a phenomenon described by philosopher Thomas Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

Kuhn posited a process to explain the persistence of incorrect ideas, and the seemingly rapid and sudden abandonment of these ideas when they finally are rejected.

People tend to believe in what they know, and science is basically conservative. A current "paradigm" or theory is difficult to dislodge. It takes either a large volume of evidence, or a particularly powerful single piece of evidence to overturn major scientific theories (scientific revolution). When this occurs, it is called a "paradigm shift".

Contents

[edit] Examples

[edit] Paradigm shifts and the demarcation problem

The concept of paradigm shifts offers one means of resolving the demarcation problem. Kuhn drew a division between sciences in a pre-paradigm state and those in a post-paradigm state, i.e. having a unifying theory or school of thought. Before a consensus is built around a single paradigm, the field is not a "true science" but a protoscience at best or a pseudoscience at worst.

[edit] Misuses and criticisms

[edit] Pseudoscientists

Creationists, New Agers, and other pseudoscientists often reference Kuhn when citing the supposed "fragility" of scientific theories. They anticipate a paradigm that shift "is coming soon" where evolution, naturalism, etc will be rejected by the scientific community, only for the consensus to return to old discredited models such as special creation, Lamarckism and vitalism. The main problem with this approach is that once a paradigm has been shifted, the old position has been thoroughly discredited, and the paradigm isn't likely to return to its original position. Suggesting it does amounts to nothing more than trying to move the goalposts or special pleading, claiming that some area (God, the soul, whatever) is off-limits to scientific inquiry.

[edit] Postmodernists

During the period of the so-called Science Wars, some advocates of "science studies" abused the term paradigm shift to justify their conclusions as a kind of scientific knowledge. ("Science studies" was a program of postmodernist pseudointellectual hogwash treating scientific knowledge as a socially constructed cultural-literary text, to be creatively critically deconstructed so as to satisfy the deconstructors' sociopolitical agenda to reveal its underpinnings as an instrument of oppression. No, really, you can't make this stuff up; Poe's law applies to loony-left whackadoodles, too.)

[edit] History of science

Some scientists and historians of science have criticized the concept on various grounds, a common one being that paradigm shifts don't occur in the revolutionary sense as often as Kuhn claimed, but happened more gradually.[1][2] The second point is that as scientific understanding progresses, scientists address smaller and smaller problems of less and less overall significance, and paradigm shifts in the understanding of details do not affect the overall big picture because they are related only to details.

[edit] External links

[edit] Footnotes

  1. The Accidental Rebel: Thomas Kuhn and The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Lawrence Eng
  2. Thomas Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions: A Critique, Anil Mitra
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