Author: Mogens Larsen
Date: 08:23:04 11/08/00
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On November 08, 2000 at 11:02:54, Joe Besogn wrote: Chris, Wouldn't it be easier to post a link or quote references instead of copying the text on the backcover? And you've already posted something similar once before. Besides, development in revolutionary spasms is hardly a novelty. It's been a part of the theory of evolution for decades. Mogens. >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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