What is a scientific paradigm in the book?

  • Sociological sense: the beliefs, values, techniques, etc., shared by the members of a scientific community
  • Shared examples sense: the theory, and most importantly the puzzle solutions (think textbook exercises) that can be used as a model for the remaining puzzle solving activities (through pattern matching)

Scientific paradigms are

  • Sufficiently unprecedented to attract followers away from competitive theories
  • Sufficiently open-ended to leave lots of open problems for practitioners

“Normal Science” consists in actualising the promise of a new paradigm

  • We can think of it as incremental puzzle solving
  • Although results are usually anticipated, they lead to detail and precision of observation-theory match that could be achieved in no other way

This makes it possible to uncover anomalies that create room for new paradigms

  • Anomalies can only appear against the background provided by the paradigm: they are observed through tools created to pursue incremental puzzle solving, and appear in contrast to anticipated precise results
  • The fact that a significant novelty often emerges simultaneously from several labs indicates that the pursuit of Normal Science systemically prepares the way for its change

How do transitions occur?

  • The decision to reject one paradigm is always simultaneously the decision to accept another; the judgment involves the comparison of both with nature and with each other on critical problems / crucial experiments - this is Poppers
  • The intellectual transition is often challenge for individuals; in the extreme, it might require the proponents of one paradigm to die and waiting for a new generation of fresh minds

What justifies calling a paradigm shift a revolution?

  • Both political and scientific revolutions require the recognition that prior institutions, political or scientific, are broken and unable to address problems they were created to solve
  • And more importantly, revolutions aim to address these problems in a way prior institutions prohibit
  • The proponents of competing paradigms will often disagree even about the list of problems that must be resolved. Must a theory of motion explain the cause of attractive forces between particles of matter and simply note the existence of such forces? Newtonian dynamics do the latter while Aristotle’s and Descartes’s theories proposed explanations

Why were revolutions largely invisible before Kuhn?

  • Education is made through textbooks, as opposed to original papers
  • Textbooks are anchored in a paradigm; when they account for past paradigms, they frame them in the language of the current paradigm (e.g., Newton accounting for Galileo with forces)
  • While this is optimised for the puzzle solving of Normal Science, it makes progress appear linear and cumulative and does not equip students to start revolutions
  • In contrast, the arts and philosophy expose the student to a library of original classics