What was Kuhn’s view on paradigm shifts in the arts? He believed that great works of art retain their value throughout time even in the face of revolutionary changes in style. To paraphrase Virginia Woolf, “On or about December 10, 1962, the world of biology changed.” Paradigm rifts and tiffs in the arts
PARADIGM SHIFT CRACKED
The genetic code had just been cracked by Nirenberg, and recombinant DNA and gene cloning were just around the corner. If ever a scientific field were on the verge of a paradigm shift, it was biology in 1962. It is ironic that the year in which Structure appeared - 1962 - was the same year in which Nobel Prizes were awarded to the scientists who obtained first molecular structures of DNA and protein - to Watson and Crick in Physiology or Medicine and Perutz and Kendrew in Chemistry. The most likely explanation is that Kuhn was totally focused on physics, which in the 1950s and 1960s was top scientific dog. To biologists, it is puzzling that Kuhn failed to mention the two greatest paradigm shifts in the biological sciences - Darwinism and Mendelism. in India and - most provocative of all - you can read a Paul Krugman op-ed piece in The New York Times entitled “The Ponzi Paradigm.” Today, you can purchase audio and video equipment from Paradigm Electronics in Canada you can buy bonds and stocks from Paradigm Financial Partners in the UK you can solve your human resource problems from Paradigm Shift Consulting Service, Ltd. In the last 10 years, paradigms have pervaded every aspect of our culture. Structure was a success because of the clever way in which Kuhn summarized his theory with two sexy catchwords. The last sentence reads: “It is much ado about very little.” Such skepticism is the true test of a paradigm shift. Its success is even more surprising when one takes a look at Structure’s first review published in Scientific American in 1962. How did a scientist who was passed over for tenure at Harvard write one of the great books of the last 50 years? Since its publication in 1962, Structure has sold 1.5 million copies in 16 languages, is still required reading in courses in the philosophy of science, and is cited more often than the classic works of Sigmund Freud, Noam Chomsky, and James Watson. Ironically, he produced his own paradigm shift by debunking the prevailing paradigm of scientific advancement. Speaking of anomalies, there are several that surround Thomas Kuhn himself. Had no Higgs been found, this would have been a paradigm-shifting anomaly worthy of a media celebration - not one showing the highfalutin Geneva physicists hugging each other, but one showing them tossing their mops and licking their chops.
This view would not be popular with the Geneva high-energy physicists who believe that their discovery of the Higgs particle is paradigm-shifting - even though, in the Kuhnian sense, it is a prime example of normal science operating within the existing paradigm of the Standard Model of particle physics.
Normal science, in Kuhn’s view, is essentially a mopping-up operation. This questioning, in turn, leads to a revolution that he termed “paradigm shift.” Kuhn based his model on the classic paradigm shifts in physics - the Copernian, Newtonian, and Einsteinian revolutions the development of quantum mechanics and Roentgen’s accidental discovery of X-rays, one of the great unanticipated anomalies in the history of science. True breakthroughs, he argued, arise in a different way - when the discovery of anomalies leads scientists to question the paradigm. Kuhn’s great insight was to realize that real progress did not result from the daily puzzle-solving of normal science. Kuhn referred to this traditional approach as “normal science,” and he used the then-obscure word “paradigm” to refer to the shared concepts that guide the members of a scientific field. Prior to Kuhn’s 1962 book, historians and philosophers considered science to be a rational endeavor in which knowledge is achieved through painstaking, day-to-day accumulation of data, facts, and minor discoveries. This book introduced the world to “paradigms” and “paradigm shifts” - two of the most misused, overused, and abused words in the world today. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the publication of a highly influential book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, by the physicist Thomas Kuhn (1). Paradigm shifts in science: Insights from the artists
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