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Essay on Scientific Revolutions
Thomas Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions
Kuhn, in his book Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), used the term 'paradigm' to refer to the conceptual frameworks and/or worldviews of various scientific communities. For Kuhn a scientific paradigm includes models like the planetary model of atoms, and theories, concepts, knowledge, assumptions, and values. For Kuhn such a concept as the scientific paradigm was essential to make his argument regarding a particular aspect of the history of science that is when one conceptual framework gives way to another during what he called a scientific revolution.
A particularly important part of Kuhn's thesis in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions focuses upon one specific component of the disciplinary matrix. This is the consensus on exemplary instances of scientific research. These exemplars of good science are what Kuhn refers to when he uses the term ‘paradigm’ in a narrower sense.
Kuhn thought that during periods of "normal science" scientists work within the same paradigm. Scientific communication and work advances rather smoothly until inconsistencies crop up or a new theory or model is anticipated which requires understanding established scientific concepts in new ways, and which rejects old assumptions and replaces them with new ones.
For Kuhn, scientific revolutions take place during those periods where at least two paradigms co-exist, one traditional and at least one new. The paradigms are incommensurable, as are the concepts used to understand and explain basic facts and beliefs. The two groups live in different worlds. The movement from the old to a new paradigm he called a paradigm shift.
The paradigm is not only the taxonomic lexicon, but according to Irzik and Grünberg (1995, pp 300-301) the taxonomic lexicon and the other parts of the paradigm are entangled in such a way that a change in one part involves a change in the other...............
