Thomas Kuhn's Philosophy of Science and Scientific Revolutions

Introduction to Kuhn's Core Assumptions

Before evaluating the merits of Kuhn's concept of scientific revolutions, one must first understand the basic assumptions underlying his theories. According to Thomas Kuhn, there are certain assumptions that the scientific community both holds and must hold. First, the scientific community works with a set of accepted beliefs. Second, the idea of normal science depends upon the assumption that the scientific community understands the world. Therefore, science is aimed at proving this understanding of the world, which can result in the suppression of new ideas and a bias in research directed toward proving believed truths. However, when certain accepted beliefs are shown to be false, there is a shift in the scientific community toward the new belief — a shift Kuhn labeled a scientific revolution.

The Nature of Normal Science and Paradigms

To fully understand Kuhn's concept of scientific revolution, one must explore what Kuhn means when he refers to normal science. Normal science is science as the status quo; it is built upon past scientific achievements that have been acknowledged by the scientific community as providing a foundation for future research. These achievements, which Kuhn refers to as paradigms, have two characteristics: they are unprecedented and open-ended. Because success in a particular scientific field relies upon the study and understanding of these paradigms, members of each scientific community share the same set of fundamental beliefs, rules, and standards for scientific practice. One of the side effects of this adherence to specific beliefs and paradigms is that scientists in each field search for answers within their own field to explain previously unexplained phenomena.

While it may appear that paradigms limit innovation in science, they do serve several useful purposes. For example, paradigms help scientists formulate questions and identify areas of study. Furthermore, paradigms can help scientists select methods of investigation. However, the most important role paradigms serve is establishing which facts are relevant in certain disciplines. Therefore, while paradigms can be limiting, they are also essential to scientific inquiry.

The first step in the development of a paradigm is the collection of facts, which are interpreted and described differently by various researchers. Eventually, competing descriptions and interpretations give rise to competing theories, known as preparadigmatic schools. Eventually, the best theory emerges as the paradigm, and those scientists who refuse to conform their work to the new paradigm are considered irrelevant in their fields. The development of a scientific discipline follows the creation of a paradigm, and with it comes the emergence of a specialized niche in academia — including journals, professional societies, and discussion centered on the discipline. Finally, the paradigm guides research for the entire discipline, which is what makes that discipline a science.

When paradigms first appear, they are somewhat imprecise and limited in scope. Moreover, new paradigms solve only some of the problems presented by an issue, but they hint at the promise of future answers. Therefore, paradigms promote science by helping to extend both knowledge and inquiry in a particular area. Furthermore, the business of normal science is to fill in the gaps left by the paradigm, which means that scientists disregard anomalies and do not make an effort to invent new theories.

How Paradigms Guide and Limit Scientific Inquiry

This view of normal science presents several problems. First, the paradigm guides the fact-finding process, which can determine not only what facts are gathered, but also what facts are ignored. Furthermore, the paradigm determines what problems should be solved by specifying that solutions must help articulate the theory. This articulation involves the development of laws and universal constants, as well as decisions about how the paradigm should be applied to other areas. As the theory is articulated, the paradigm undergoes a series of refinements that make it more precise and increase the correlation between the paradigm and what else is known about the area of study.

In addition, normal science is limited in that, by seeking certain results, it overlooks the possibility of unanticipated outcomes. The pressure on scientists for their findings to conform to anticipated results creates bias in two ways: first, when results do not conform, the experiment is considered unsuccessful and the results are not published; second, the publication of conforming results gives the impression that all experiments have yielded conforming results. Therefore, scientific research is not actually aimed at finding the solution to a problem — which scientists often presuppose before conducting research — but at finding a method to achieve that solution. Genuine research questions are thus not characterized by a search for the unknown, but by a search for a particular solution.

There is also a relationship among four facets of science — concept, theory, methodology, and instrumentation — that helps guide research and formulate research questions. Despite adherence to traditional beliefs, research can and does yield surprising results, which can lead to the creation of a new paradigm and constitute the essential step in a scientific revolution.

Because rules are derived from paradigms, it follows that one can research the paradigm without necessarily resorting to the rules. In fact, when a paradigm is sufficiently mature to form the basis of a scientific discipline, it is relatively easy to articulate the paradigm — yet there may still be disagreement within the discipline about the resulting rules. One primary reason for such disagreement is that scientists differ in their interpretation of the paradigm. An additional reason is that the rules are of secondary importance to the paradigm itself, since the rules and laws of a discipline are never applied without reference to the original paradigm.

Differences in interpretation can, however, produce interesting results across the sciences. For example, when several sciences share a single paradigm as their foundation, they may employ it in different ways. Therefore, a scientific revolution that completely overturns one discipline may have little or no effect on a discipline founded on the same paradigm. This is because paradigms continue to grow and evolve with research, and each subspecialty develops its own research, laws, and rules from the paradigm.