Author: Joe Besogn
Date: 08:02:54 11/08/00
Kuhn concluded early that the conventional textbooks on the history of science were simply wrong, not so much about facts as about processes and sequences. No science primarily develops in steady, small increments — tiny accruals of fact. Science develops in revolutionary spasms, with periods of consolidation between. Both before and after revolutionary changes, any given discipline has overarching theories, some models, favorite metaphors, systems of symbolization. These ways of thinking — Kuhn called them together paradigms — not only define the discipline but can be used to explain most of the phenomena in which the discipline is interested, as did Ptolemaic astronomy or the phlogiston theory. Most "normal science" is not engaged in radical innovations, lonely and heroic explorations of the unknown. Most normal scientists work with the puzzles for which the contemporary paradigm is applicable. Those puzzles for which the paradigm does not apply are typically ignored or even denied to exist. But sometimes these anomalies of explanation cannot be denied, either for pressing general reasons (in which case several people are apt to create a new paradigm almost simultaneously) or because some atypical scientist finds the climate right for the acceptance of his ideas. Then a new paradigm is created, a new system of thought, which explains more phenomena more parsimoniously and elegantly. Often, Kuhn tells us, there ensues a battle between the conservatives, the adherents to the old paradigm, and devotees of the new ways of thinking. When one side or the other wins, they can return to their more peaceful puzzle laboratories. A new paradigm amounts to seeing the theoretical structure of a scientific discipline in some new and useful way. The effect, if innovation takes hold, is revolutionary. If the revolution is a large one, the effector or effectors are often dubbed geniuses, and previous geniuses become denigrated.
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