The Structure of Scientific Revolutions: Difference between revisions

It may be unfashionable but it’s also powerful, and if you want to understand it, and its power, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions - as short and beautifully written a classic of philosophy as you could possibly ask for - is as good a place as any to start.

All this activity takes place inside what Kuhn describes as a “[[paradigm]]” - a “particular coherent tradition of scientific research". The [[paradigm]] governs not only the theory but the education, instrumentation, rules and standards of scientific practice, and is the basis on which the scientific community decides which kinds of questions are and are not relevant to the development of scientific research. A paradigm claims exclusivity over the adjudication of its own subject matter, and one only has authority to pronounce on a scientific problem once one has been fully inducted: evolutionary biologists will not take seriously the biological assertions of fundamentalist Christians, for example. Fundamentalist Christians who take biology exams will fail, and thereby will never be able to authoritatively comment on biological matters.