Research under a paradigm must be a particularly effective way of inducing paradigm change.
Interpretation
Research within a specific framework can significantly influence shifts in established scientific thought.
Thomas Kuhn's quote emphasizes the importance of conducting research within a theoretical framework or paradigm to effectively bring about changes to that paradigm. By exploring and challenging existing theories through rigorous research, scientists can provoke reconsideration and evolution of scientific beliefs, ultimately fostering advancements in understanding and knowledge in various fields.
In practice
During a scientific conference, a speaker may use this quote to introduce a discussion on how research has led to shifts in scientific consensus.
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.
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.
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.
All significant breakthroughs are break -βwithsβ old ways of thinking.
There are many instances in science, where those closest to the intricacies of the subject have a more highly developed sense of its intractability than those at some remove. On the other hand, those at too great a distance may, I am well aware, mistake ignorance for perspective.
In science, you really do need to have a purpose-driven life. You will succeed to the extent that you get the most out of your career so that you can give the most back. Try to be an addict, driven to achieve discoveries, learning new things, and then writing about them.
I think we need to move to the moons of Mars and learn how to control robots that are on the surface. It's not the impatient way of getting there, but Mars has been there a long time.
At their best, at their most creative, science and engineering are attributes of liberty-noble expressions of man's God-given right to investigate and explore the universe without fear of social or political or religious reprisals.
Now, a living organism is nothing but a wonderful machine endowed with the most marvellous properties and set going by means of the most complex and delicate mechanism.
If you don't get a good night's sleep, the events of the day are not properly encoded in memory.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.