A paradigm, as defined in Kuhn-1962-structure-of-scientific-revolutions, is a shared framework that defines how a scientific community understands and investigates the world.
paradigms-and-revolutions-are-local-to-scientific-fields social-consequence-of-paradigms scientific-discovery-are-not-discrete-events
As define by Theory and reality (Godfrey-Smith) p. 77:
- broad sense: package of ideas and methods, which, when combined, make up both a view of the world and a way of doing science
- narrow sense: one key part of a paradigm in the broad sense is a specific achievement, or an exemplar (something that inspires other to shift their thinking towards a different way of investigating the world, leading to the paradigm)
what a paradigm includes
- fundamental laws and theoretical assumptions
- key formulas, constants, and methods
- standards for what counts as a legitimate problem and solution
- “puzzles” assumed to have solutions
- consensus = using a shared paradigm means to be committed o the same rules and standards for scientific practice = it is the pre-requisite of normal science
- paradigms are often limited in both scope and precision at the time of its first appearance
“paradigms provide scientists not only with a map but also with some of the directions essential for map-making. In learning a paradigm the scientist acquires theory, methods, and standards together, usually in an inextricable mixture.” (Kuhn, p. 109)
The information found in science textbooks, as well as in classical books of science (Aristotle’s Physica, Ptolemy’s Almagest, Newton’s Principia, etc.) are paradigms to “prepare the student for membership in the particular scientific community” (Kuhn, p. 11)
A paradigm’s role is to organize scientific work as it coordinates the work of individuals into an efficient collective enterprise.1
A paradigm does not need to explain all known facts to be accepted. It gains authority and status by solving a solve number of pressing problems better than its competitors (Kuhn, p. 17, 23)
“To be accepted as a paradigm, a theory must seem better than its competitors, but it need not, and in fact never does, explain all the facts with which it can be confronted.” (p. 17)
“Paradigms gain their status because they are more successful than their competitors in solving a few problems that the group of practitioners has come to recognize as acute.” (p. 23)
The main categories of rules that restrict acceptable solutions to the research problems of normal science (p. 38 - 42 ) =
- theoretical = explicit statements about scientific laws, concepts, theories
- instrumental = commitments to preferred instrumentation and its legitimate use
- methodological = quasi-metaphysical and methodological commitments to fundamental sorts of entities and acceptable forms of explanations
- conceptual = commitments to “understand the world and to extend the precision and scope with which it has been ordered”
The ways in which paradigms guide normal science research cannot always be reduced to rules. (p. 42) See paradigms-and-revolutions-are-local-to-scientific-fields
Kuhn believes that we need to give up the old paradigm completely when we gain a new paradigm as they cannot translate together.
- What’s going on nowadays between classical mechanics and quantum physics is that even though we have acknowledge the short-comings of the “old paradigm” (Newtonian) we sometimes still use the old paradigm in limited applications.
Footnotes
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Theory and Reality, Godfrey-Smith, p. 80 ↩