Kameir

A common misinterpretation of paradigms is the belief that the discovery of paradigm shifts and the dynamic nature of science with its many opportunities for subjective judgments by scientists are a case for relativism: the view that all kinds of belief systems are equal. However, when a scientific paradigm is replaced by a new one, albeit through a complex social process, the new one is always better, not just different.

These claims of relativism are, however, tied to another claim: that the language and theories of different paradigms cannot be translated into one another or rationally evaluated against one another—that they are incommensurable. This gave rise to much talk of different peoples and cultures having radically different worldviews or conceptual schemes—so different that whether or not one was better, they could not be understood by one another.

However, the philosopher Donald Davidson published a highly regarded essay in 1974, “On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme” (Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association) arguing that the notion that any languages or theories could be incommensurable with one another was itself incoherent.

If this is correct, Kuhn’s claims must be taken in a weaker sense than they often are. Furthermore, the hold of the Kuhnian analysis on social science has long been tenuous with the wide application of multi-paradigmatic approaches in order to understand complex human behavior.

Paradigm shifts tend to be most dramatic in sciences that appear to be stable and mature, as in physics at the end of the 19th century. At that time, physics seemed to be a discipline filling in the last few details of a largely worked-out system. In 1900, Lord Kelvin famously told an assemblage of physicists at the British Association for the Advancement of Science, “There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement.”[veracity of this quote challenged in Lord Kelvin article] Five years later, Albert Einstein published his paper on special relativity, which challenged the very simple set of rules laid down by Newtonian mechanics, which had been used to describe force and motion for over two hundred years.

In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Kuhn wrote, “Successive transition from one paradigm to another via revolution is the usual developmental pattern of mature science.” Kuhn’s idea was itself revolutionary in its time, as it caused a major change in the way that academics talk about science. Thus, it could be argued that it caused or was itself part of a “paradigm shift” in the history and sociology of science. However, Kuhn would not recognise such a paradigm shift. In the social sciences, people can still use earlier ideas to discuss the history of science.