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Paradigm Shifts
A paradigm shift, introduced by Thomas Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, describes how science advances not by steady accumulation but through revolutionary episodes where an entire reigning framework collapses and is replaced by an incompatible successor.
Overview
Anomalies accumulate beyond what the dominant framework can absorb — classical mechanics could not explain blackbody radiation or the photoelectric effect — until the scientific community adopts a new worldview that restructures which questions are meaningful, which methods count as valid, and what a good explanation looks like. Kuhn argued this process is driven as much by sociological dynamics within research communities as by logic alone.
Why it matters
The concept profoundly influenced disciplines far beyond philosophy of science: historians apply it to political revolutions, business scholars use it to analyze how a new technology displaces an incumbent industry, and sociologists of knowledge have used it to foundationally reframe science as a social practice embedded in communities with shared norms and assumptions rather than a neutral logic of discovery.
Related concepts
- Philosophy of ScienceconceptualKuhn's paradigm theory transformed philosophy of science by showing that scientific progress is not purely cumulative but involves revolutionary breaks
- Scientific MethodlogicalParadigm shifts challenge naive views of scientific method by showing that observation is theory-laden and methodological standards change with paradigms
- Historiographical SchoolsappliedThe historiography of science uses paradigm shift analysis to structure narratives of scientific revolution and intellectual change
- Epistemology (Theory of Knowledge)logicalParadigm shifts raise epistemological questions about relativism, incommensurability, and whether successive paradigms approach objective truth