Paradigm Shift Essay

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Paradigm shift A paradigm shift is according to Thomas Kuhn, in his influential book “ The Structure of scientific revolutions (1962), a change in the basic assumption, or paradigms, within the ruling of theory of science. It is in contrast to his idea of normal science according to Kuhn, “A paradigm is what members of a scientific community, and they alone share the essential tension. Once a paradigm shift is complete, a scientist cannot for example, reject the germ theory of disease to posit the possibility that miasma causes the disease or reject modern physic and optics that aether can carries light. But a critic can choose to adopt an array of stances. Kuhnian Paradigm shifts A Scientific revolution occurs when scientist encounter anomilies that cannot be explained by the universally accepted paradigm within which scientific progress thereto been made. Paradigm in khunis view is not simply the current theory but the entire world view in which it exists. Science and Paradigm shifts A common misinterpretation of paradigms is the belief that the discovery of paradigms shifts and the dynamic nature of science with its many opportunities for subjective judgments by scientists are a case for relativist, the view that all kinds of delief systems are equal, Kuhn vehemently denies this interpretation, and status that 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. Examples of paradigm shifts Natural sciences Some of the "classical cases" of Kuhnian paradigm shifts in science are: * The transition in coismology from a Ptolemaic cosmology to a Copernican one. * The transition in optics from geometrical optics to physical optics. * The transition in mechanics from Aristotelian mechanics to classical mechanics. * The acceptance of the theory of
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