By Dr. Saul McLeod, published 2020
Thomas Kuhn attacks “development-by-accumulation” views of science which hold that science progresses linearly by accumulation of theory-independent facts. Kuhn looked at the history of science and argued that science does not simply progress by stages based upon neutral observations (e.g. Positivism).
For Kuhn, the history of science is characterized by revolutions in scientific outlook. Scientists have a worldview or "paradigm". A paradigm is a universally recognizable scientific achievement that, for a time, provides model problems and solutions to a community of practitioners.
A paradigm is a basic framework of assumptions, principals and methods from which the members of the community work. It is a set of norms which tell a scientists how to think and behave and although in science there are rival schools of thought there is still a single paradigm that all scientists accept uncritically.
Scientists accept the dominant paradigm until anomalies are thrown up. Scientists then begin to question the basis of the paradigm itself, new theories emerge which challenge the dominant paradigm and eventually one of these new theories becomes accepted as the new paradigm.
During different periods of science, certain perspectives held sway over the thinking of researchers. A particular work may “define the legitimate problems and methods of a research field for succeeding generations of practitioners.”
Knowledge which does not evolve according to the four main phases, according to Kuhn, may not be considered scientific.
(most common – science is usually stable)
(most common – science is usually stable)
"Normal Science, the activity in which most scientists inevitably spend almost all of their time, is predicated on the assumption that the scientific community knows what the world is like. Much of the success of the enterprise derives from the community's willingness to defend that assumption, if necessary at considerable cost. Normal Science, for example, often suppresses fundamental novelties because they are necessarily subversive of its basic commitments" (Kuhn, 1996, p. 5).
The enormous impact of Thomas 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.
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.
For Kuhn, the choice of paradigm was sustained by, but not ultimately determined by, logical processes. Kuhn believed that it represented the consensus of the community of scientists. Acceptance or rejection of some paradigm is, he argued, a social process as much as a logical process.
This means Kuhn has been accused of being a relativist. Maybe all the theories are equally valid? Why should we believe today’s science when it might be overturned in future? Kuhn vigorously rejected this, claiming that scientific revolutions have always led to new, more accurate theories, and represent true progress.
Does science make progress through scientific revolutions? Are later paradigms better than earlier ones? No, Kuhn suggests, they are just different. The scientific revolutions which supplant one paradigm with another do not take us closer to the truth about the way the world is.
Successive paradigms are incommensurable. Kuhn says that a later paradigm may be a better instrument for solving puzzles than an earlier one. But if each paradigm defines its own puzzles, what is a puzzle for one paradigm may be no puzzle at all for another. So why is it progress to replace one paradigm with another which solves puzzles that the earlier paradigm does not even recognize? Kuhn used his incommensurability thesis to disprove the view the paradigm shifts are objective. Truth is relative to the paradigm.
Science does not change its paradigm over night. Younger scientists take a new paradigm forward. As Kuhn put it "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."
Thomas Kuhn showed contemporary philosophers could not ignore the history of science and the social context which science takes place. Science is a product of the society in which it is practiced.
Was there a cognitive revolution from behaviorism that changed methodology and assumptions? Is cognitive psychology a new paradigm? Hints: It's still reductionist, input – output, still uses the experimental method.
McLeod, S. A. (2020, May 01). Thomas kuhn - science as a paradigm. Simply Psychology. www.simplypsychology.org/Kuhn-Paradigm.html
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