All crises begin with the blurring of a paradigm and the consequent loosening of the rules for normal research. .. Or finally, the case that will most concern us here, a crisis may end with the emergence of a new candidate for paradigm and with the ensuing battle over its acceptance.
Interpretation
Crises in science arise when existing paradigms are questioned, leading to the potential for new ideas to emerge.
This quote by Thomas Kuhn explains the nature of scientific crises, highlighting that they often begin when established paradigms become blurred and traditional research rules are altered. Such crises can lead to significant shifts in understanding, culminating in the introduction of new paradigms that compete for acceptance within the scientific community.
In practice
In an academic paper discussing scientific progress, one might quote Kuhn to illustrate how paradigm shifts drive innovation.
To turn Karl [Popper]'s view on its head, it is precisely the abandonment of critical discourse that marks the transition of science. Once a field has made the transition, critical discourse recurs only at moments of crisis when the bases of the field are again in jeopardy. Only when they must choose between competing theories do scientists behave like philosophers.
Crisis alone is not enough. There must also be a basis, though it need be neither rational nor ultimately correct, for faith in the particular candidate chosen.
The historian of science may be tempted to exclaim that when paradigms change, the world itself changes with them.
Concerned to reconstruct past ideas, historians must approach the generation that held them as the anthropologist approaches an alien culture. They must, that is, be prepared at the start to find that natives speak a different language and map experience into different categories from those they themselves bring from home. And they must take as their object the discovery of those categories and the assimilation of the corresponding language.
Research under a paradigm must be a particularly effective way of inducing paradigm change.
All significant breakthroughs are break -“withs” old ways of thinking.
C'este donc par l'étude des mathématiques, et seulement par elle, que l'on peut se faire une idée juste et approfondie de ce que c'est qu'une science.
In the past, geneticists have looked at so-called disease genes, but a lot of people have changes in their genes and don't get these diseases. There have to be other parts of physiology and genetics that compensate.
When, however, the lay public rallies round an idea that is denounced by distinguished but elderly scientists and supports that idea with great fervor and emotion - the distinguished but elderly scientists are then, after all, probably right.
I fell in love with the elegance and precision of genetic analysis and experimentation to answer profound biological questions.
The difference between screwing around and science is writing it down.
Trace Science, then, with Modesty thy guide,_x000D_ _x000D_ First strip off all her equipage of Pride,_x000D_ _x000D_ Deduct what is but Vanity or Dress,_x000D_ _x000D_ Or Learning's Luxury or idleness,_x000D_ _x000D_ Or tricks, to show the stretch of the human brain_x000D_ _x000D_ Mere curious pleasure or ingenious pain.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.