In 1962, Thomas Kuhn published his famous book “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” where he explained how the society perceives philosophy behind the revered practical sciences (John). He used the term ‘paradigm shift’ which most people have abused in the contemporary society, to explain his theory and philosophical approach to classical science. Before publishing his theory, researches and other theorists relied on whig interpretation which embarked on long experiments aiming to establish the truth or bring better understanding of the world.
Kuhn developed a scientific argument different from the Whig interpretation. His version stated that the standard account undergoes a cumulative change characterized by alternating phases of normal and revolutionary that exposes experts in a given field into a crisis and uncertainty. According to his argument, the genesis of all fields is pre-science which us a period of discovering the problem but no strategies or developments are available to cause progress. Development in any field of science has to go through a series of changes (Kuhn). The desire to establish understanding model causes paradigm shift whose progress leads to normal science where specialists have come up with an understanding of the natural world. Community specialists feel contended that they have achieved their objectives of finding solutions to the initially central problems.
The nature of science is dynamic thus; with time the quest to deeply explore areas of interest in the current field raises more questions and anomalies making the normal model to appear insufficient. The accumulation of trouble over long period of time results more unresolved anomalies that make the scientists to question the capability of the current paradigm to give solutions to the central problem. A period of crisis follows because scientists can no longer make rational decisions using the current model but rely more on guesswork, which reserves higher chances of failing. The community of specialists struggle to come up with a new model that can give viable explanations to end the current crisis. The revolutionary model, regarded as a new paradigm is born to replace the old deficient model. This paradigm is modern shift that serves as the new framework that soon becomes the normal model that scientists rely on to give explanations to various problems. The cycle starts all over again because knowledge about the world is dynamic. The cycle can be illustrated when looking at the scientific breakthroughs made from the time of Aristotle to the time of Galileo and Newton and the contemporary times when scientific discoveries have moved to another level. When going by Kuhn’s theory, Aristotle may appear an idiot in the face of modern science which is not the case because during his time, his standard model was appropriate (Kuhn).
He argued that the nature of observations in any scientific field can be influenced by the observer’s prior views and experiences. He cited the example of Aristotle and Galileo who both looked at a pendulum but made different observations in what he called the theory of dependency observation. His views held that scientists cannot universally agree on the methods of inferring data. His theory of dependence interpretation subjects inferences the nature of data and not the agreed methods. This explains why specialists in various disciplinary field matrices of quantum physics view the world from different perspectives and claim that the world is different even when they use similar data.
Works cited.
John, N. Thomas Kuhn: the man who change how the world looked at science (2012). The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/aug/19/thomas-kuhn-structure-scientific-revolutions
Kuhn Thomas S. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Chicago: University of Chicago Press (1970, 2nd edition, with postscript).
Kuhn Thomas S. “Second Thoughts on Paradigms”, in The Structure of Scientific Theories F. Suppe (ed.), Urbana IL: University of Illinois Press 1974: 459–82.
