"...the new paradigm cannot build on the preceding one. Rather, it can only supplant it..." (Thomas Kuhn).
Kuhn's theory was in effect challenging a view of scientific progress that had begun with Comte and the Enlightenment. This refers to the original view and belief that scientific discovery and analysis was part of the process of positive historical human progress. There was an inner logic to scientific advancement that was in line with concept of progress towards the ideal. This view was also related to the ideology of the progress of society towards an ideal state. (the History Guide: Lectures on Modern European Intellectual History).
However this scientific idealism was sharply challenged by Thomas Kuhn's the Structure of a Scientific Revolution in 1962. The view that this theory ultimately suggested was that science was not an ideal march of object scientific discovery into the future - but rather that science was limited and circumscribed by different phases or paradigms which were essentially separate and discrete.
This aspect has created a great amount of controversy. Weinberg for example states that; "What does bother me on rereading Structure and some of Kuhn's later writings is his radically skeptical conclusions about what is accomplished in the work of science" (Weinberg). This writer claims that Kuhn has become a hero to those who would describe scientific theories in terms of social constructions, and that this view is in essence a misrepresentation of the true nature of scientific discovery. (Weinberg). This is a general view among those scientists who criticize Kuhn's theory.
Kuhn's theory has not only impacted on the way that scientists are viewed but also on the very foundations of the discipline - namely the ideology that science is concerned with the search, and discovery, of ultimate truths. In this regard Kuhn argues that in reality the view of science as a steady and progressive uncovering of the truth of reality is a myth and that science is not a progressive evolution of knowledge. "Kuhn argued that this is not a process of evolution toward anything, and he questioned whether it really helps to imagine that there is one, full, objective, true account of nature." (Thomas Kuhn)
In other words, and in conclusion, Kuhn's theory goes against the very assumptions that underlie conventional science; namely that there no unequivocal and distinct truth that can be discovered about nature and reality if we take into account the relativity of scientific paradigms. This is a radical invasion of the foundations of science and is not unexpected that there should be dissent and debate from the traditionalists.
It should however be remembered that Kuhn's theory does not take place in intellectual isolation but should rather be seen in the light of contemporary thought and philosophy. In this regard it should be taken into account that the philosophy of science is linked in terms of the trajectory of its theoretical development with more interrogative and deconstructive approach to all disciplines, that began with modernism in the early Twentieth Century.
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Thomas Kuhn (1922-1996) was an American scientist, historian and philosopher who wrote a controversial book in 1962 called The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Kuhn was born in Cincinnati, Ohio and from an early age expressed interest in science, particularly physics; obtaining his BS degree in physics from Harvard in 1943. He stayed at Harvard for his MS and PhD, and credits the period of the late 1940s in helping him
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