Paradigm shifts in science: insights from the arts

Abstract

This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of a highly influential book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by the physicist and historian Thomas Kuhn1. This is the book that introduced the world to the principles of “paradigms” and “paradigm shifts.” Ironically, it is also the book in which the author underwent his own paradigm shift by debunking the prevailing theory of how scientific progress comes about. Prior to Kuhn’s 1962 book, historians and philosophers of science considered the scientific enterprise to be a rational endeavor in which progress and knowledge are achieved through the steady, day-to-day, painstaking accumulation of experimental data, accredited facts and new discoveries. Kuhn referred to this traditional approach as “normal science,” and he used the then-obscure word paradigm to refer to the shared ideas and concepts that guide the members of a given scientific field. Kuhn’s great insight was to realize that real progress did not result from the puzzle-solving of normal science. Instead, he argued that true breakthroughs arise in a totally different way—when the discovery of anomalies leads scientists to question the paradigm, and this in turn leads to a scientific revolution that he termed paradigm shift. Kuhn based his model on the classic paradigm shifts in physics, including the Copernican, Newtonian and Einsteinian revolutions, the development of quantum mechanics, which replaced classical mechanics at the subatomic level, and the accidental discovery of X-rays by Roentgen, one of the great unanticipated anomalies in the history of science. In one sense, Kuhn viewed normal science as a mopping-up operation. Yet he did recognize the essential importance of normal science, appreciating that most discoveries occur during periods of normal science. To illustrate with a contemporary example, conParadigm shifts in science: insights from the arts