Hold up after new experimental data comes in We’ll judge based on whether the paradigm candidates do the following:Ĭhallenge or replace a paradigm in crisisĪttract and rally supporters within scientific community In this column, we want to explore science’s more recent big ideas and ask whether they fit Kuhn’s description of a paradigm shift. However, successful revolutionary paradigms tend to come into their own at moments when the reigning paradigm has already been weakened by unexplained or contradictory findings. Truly revolutionary paradigms tend to get a lot of pushback when they debut. Scientific disciplines have to be redefined. Data collected under the older paradigm takes on new meaning. When a new paradigm does manage to topple and replace its predecessor, it tends to be a tumultuous event, at least in Kuhn’s account. Many ideas spend decades waiting in the wings, and some paradigms never manage to unseat their predecessor. Not all paradigms lead to paradigm shifts. But before we get into all that, we thought it would be helpful to break down Kuhn’s ideas in more detail: Along the way, we’ll learn about the recent histories of scientific fields and where these fields might be headed. To do that we’ll comb through past papers and essays, and we’ll ask science historians, science writers, and scientists themselves how well these recent shifts match Kuhn’s descriptions. In this column, we'll put a few alleged paradigm shifts to the test. Still, some ideas have much stronger claims to revolutionary paradigm status than others. As a science journalist, I frequently hear researchers using Kuhn’s terms as smarter-sounding synonyms for mind-blowing. That last bit is the one people seem to forget. Much like political revolutions, scientific revolutions are marked by bitter disputes, fierce resistance, and total upheaval. In true paradigm shifts, people give up their fundamental assumptions in favour of new ones. But do all these claimants to the title of 'Revolutionary Paradigm' live up to the criteria Kuhn laid out? It turns up everywhere, from startups’ press releases to scientific conferences to self-help books. Today, the phrase scientific revolution has a glamorous rebel gleam to it, and paradigm shift has become popular as a grant proposal buzzword. By the end of the decade, the book had become a massive bestseller. But to other readers, putting scientists’ wonderment and puzzle-solving impulses centre-stage rang true. Some critics misread Kuhn’s position as anti-science or anti-evidence, despite his repeated emphasis on the importance of empirical data. Even more damningly, Kuhn claimed that practitioners of 'normal science' sometimes sweep observations that didn’t fit with current consensus paradigms under the rug - or, at least, set weird findings aside for later re-evaluation. Successful paradigms’ earliest champions often collect data based on hunches. However, he also argued that individuals’ feelings decide which ideas get tested in the first place. In Structure, Kuhn stressed that evidence and logic are crucial for testing ideas. Enter Kuhn, writing that emotions drive science.
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