Paradigm shift

A major change in the framework guiding research within a scientific discipline. It reshapes which questions, methods, and explanations scientists regard as legitimate.

Normal science: Scientific research conducted within a shared framework of accepted theories, methods, and problems. Kuhn used this term for routine puzzle-solving before a framework is overturned.
Thomas Kuhn: An American historian and philosopher of science whose work recast accounts of scientific change. His account made paradigm shifts central to the history and philosophy of science.
Copernican Revolution: The transformation of astronomy associated with replacing Earth-centered cosmology with a Sun-centered system. It is a classic example of a shift in astronomy’s organizing picture of the cosmos.
Falsifiability: The property of a claim that allows possible observations to count against it. Karl Popper treated critical testing as central, unlike Kuhn’s emphasis on paradigm-bound research.
Anomaly (science): An observation or result that conflicts with expectations generated by an established scientific framework. Persistent anomalies can expose limits in the framework guiding normal science.
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions: Thomas Kuhn’s 1962 book arguing that science develops through periods of normal research interrupted by revolutions. This book introduced the influential account behind the modern use of “paradigm shift.”
Newtonian mechanics: The laws of motion and universal gravitation formulated by Isaac Newton in the seventeenth century. Its rise reorganized explanations of motion and celestial mechanics.
Scientific realism: The philosophical view that successful scientific theories describe a mind-independent world, including its unobservable features. It raises questions about whether successive paradigms approach truth or change what scientists can describe.
Scientific crisis: A period when confidence in a scientific framework weakens as it fails to resolve significant problems. Kuhn described crisis as a possible stage between anomalies and a framework change.
Scientific paradigm: A shared set of exemplary problems, methods, assumptions, and standards that guides research in a scientific community. A shift changes this shared framework, rather than merely adding one isolated result.

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