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Although scientific knowledge is often viewed as 'objective' or at least more 'objective' than subjective opinion, the ways in which scientific knowledge is created are not written in stone. The notion of a paradigm shift, which "refers either to a model or an example to be followed or to an established system or way of doing things," was developed by Thomas Kuhn to explain how science progresses and changes (Lewis-Beck, Bryman, & Futing 2004). Another way of defining a paradigm might be that of a 'lens' or the particular way in which a group of persons within a specific discipline sees the world, consciously and unconsciously filtering the stimuli around them. But Kuhn's concept of the scientific paradigm was a departure from previous ways of looking at science. "As a reaction against philosophies of science that prescribed the appropriate scientific method, such as Popper's falsificationism, Kuhn (1970) focused on the practices of communities of scientists" (Lewis-Beck, Bryman, & Futing 2004). Instead of science developing in a linear fashion in a quest for ' truth,' Kuhn saw scientific developments as a series of ideological changes, in which there was a radical break with the past when the scientific community as a whole was willing to change long-standing approaches to generating knowledge. Kuhn saw scientists as engaged in a constant negotiation "consisting of their views of the nature of the reality they study (their ontology), including the components that make it up and how they are related; the techniques that are appropriate for investigating this reality (their epistemology); and accepted examples of past scientific achievements (exemplars)" (Lewis-Beck, Bryman, & Futing 2004).

Previously, the philosophy science was viewed primarily through a positivist framework: "in a positivist view of the world, science was seen as the way to get at truth, to understand the world well enough so that we might predict and control it" (Trochim 2006). (This is what Popper meant when he said that if a claim could not be proven false, it could not be proven true, either). Kuhn took what came to be known as a post-positivist view, suggesting that science could be affected by history and a willingness of people (who happened to be scientists) to change: "Post-positivists reject the idea that any individual can see the world perfectly as it really is" (Trochim 2006).

The question of epistemology, or how knowledge can be established, is quite critical to science, given that modern science often attempts to answer questions about the physical world in a manner that can have a demonstrable material impact upon human lives: for example the conditions for demonstrating that