Jits
Jits
Jits
Was it?
Kuhnian Revolutions
• Science is not a steady, cumulative
acquisition of knowledge.
• Science is "a series of peaceful
interludes punctuated by intellectually
violent revolutions,“
• After such revolutions, "one conceptual
world view is replaced by another."
Thomas S. Kuhn, “The Structure of
Scientific Revolutions”, 1962
Kuhn: A Scientific Paradigm
• a collection of beliefs shared by
scientists, a set of agreements about
how problems are to be understood.
• essential to scientific inquiry
• a paradigm guides the research efforts
of scientific communities, and it is this
criterion that most clearly identifies a
field as a science.
Kuhn: Paradigm Shift
• When a paradigm shift takes place, "a
scientist's world is qualitatively
transformed [and] quantitatively
enriched by fundamental novelties of
either fact or theory."
From Drifting Continents…
• Benjamin Franklin wrote in 1782: