Paradigm

Kuhn argued that his use of the term revolution to describe changes in science is appropriate because, like political revolutions, scientific revolutions overturn existing rules and institutions in order to establish new ones. By definition, there can be no legal way to have a political revolution, since any changes that follow the processes of the old regime would merely be reform, not revolution. For Kuhn the key point of the analogy between political and scientific revolutions is that in both cases there are no rules that could help adjudicate between the two systems. The supporters of the old and the new paradigms will each follow their own methods, emphasize their own aims, and accept their own solutions to problems, without necessarily accepting any of the methods, aims, or standards of supporters of the other paradigm. In an influential paper that helped redirect criticism of Kuhn's book, Gerald Doppelt emphasized the apparent relativism of Kuhn's view, given that there is no right or wrong answer to the question of when an old paradigm should be abandoned and a new paradigm adopted. Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier (1743–1794) and Joseph Priestley (1733–1804) independently discovered oxygen, but while Lavoisier used this discovery as a basis for a new chemistry, Priestley never accepted Lavoisier's revolution and maintained the old phlogiston paradigm instead. Kuhn argued that Thomas S. Kuhn. The Harvard-educated Kuhn first proposed his personalized theory of paradigm in his 1962 Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Kuhn posited that paradigms were conceived through thought and physical experimentation, rather than by representing established sets of beliefs. PHOTOGRAPH BY STANLEY BROWN. REPRODUCED BY PERMISSION OF THE ESTATE OF THOMAS S. KUHN both of these famous scientists were acting reasonably. Nothing can force a scientist to change paradigms, according to Kuhn, because a scientist can always find a way either to incorporate new data into the existing paradigm or to show why the new data can be dismissed as unimportant from the point of view of the existing paradigm. It is important to note, however, that Kuhn is not saying that anyone can believe anything. Paradigms must be well developed and cover a wide range of phenomena. It is not easy to develop a new science that will justify the overthrow of an established paradigm.

Rather than promoting general relativism, Kuhn saw himself as rejecting particular philosophical accounts of science. He criticizes the idea of confirming scientific theories and comparing how well they are confirmed, a view of science associated with Rudolf Carnap (1891–1970), and he criticizes the idea of testing scientific theories to show that one theory is false, a view of science associated with Karl Popper (1902–1994). Both of these views require that a body of neutral evidence be available to scientists, a position that Kuhn disputes because, he claims, all evidence is acquired on the basis of a paradigm and therefore an element of it. He also points out that Popper's view that theories should be rejected when negative evidence is found is unrealistic, since there are always anomalies—problems that the paradigm cannot solve.