Philosophy Kuhn's Rationale on the Irrationality of Scientific Revolutions "Communities in this sense exist, of course, at numerous levels. The most global is the community of all natural scientists." ~Thomas S. Kuhn, from The Structure of Scientific Revolutions To understand Thomas Kuhn's ideas regarding scientific revolutions, one must have a grasp on Kuhn's ideas relating to the history of science in general. Kuhn's perspective on the history of science is that scientific knowledge is

Theory Development Nature and Use of Theory in Academic Research Corley and Gioia (2001) call theory the, "currency of our scholarly realm" (p. 12). The authors further explain that theoretical contribution is a requirement for a manuscript to be considered for publication. It appears that all scholarly writing hinges on the theoretical worthiness of the material. Corley and Gioia defined theory as a statement of concepts and their interrelationships that together, demonstrate

Philosophy: Empiricism Empiricism: Does it Collapse into Idealism? What is Empiricism? It is important at first to identify the fact that "empiricism" may refer to a method -- for example, the "empirical method" of observing child behavior, or an "empirical study of cancer in rats" -- and it also may refer to the philosophy (or the theory) that embraces empiricism. That philosophy of empiricism, by one definition, "has its roots in dualist theories

Role of theory in research. Does it serve to connect components of the study? Is it a basis for selecting a research approach? Raw data in and of itself is not useful or comprehensible. Theory acts as a guiding force to make various bits of empirical evidence relevant and to provide a guide to how to use and interpret information. According to Michael Patton, "a theory says, 'These are the things

.. If we adopt an alternative approach in which we 'give up the language of identity'. (Belshaw and Price, p.88). In the light of this perception, the following scenario applies. If we give up the language of identity, we can claim that a survives the operation and so survives as two different people, B and C, without claiming that a is identical to either B. Or C. Or both. By giving

Philosophy (general) Given that experience is argued to be the foundation of knowledge (according to Locke) how - if at all - does Locke make room for what Leibniz would call 'necessary truths'? Gottfried Leibniz made many criticisms of the work of John Locke, while acknowledging its sophistication and importance, observing that 'although the author of the Essays says hundreds of fine things which I applaud, our systems are very different' (Leibniz,