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.
If you aren't confused by quantum mechanics, you haven't really understood it.
When I find myself in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a room full of dukes.
Even your chin is made up of exploded stars.
It's not going to be just humans colonizing space, it's going to be life moving out from the Earth, moving it into its kingdom. And the kingdom of life, of course, is going to be the universe.
The science shows that the best way to use money is to take the issue of money off the people. Pay people enough so that money isn't an issue, and they can focus on doing great work.
Forty years as an astronomer have not quelled my enthusiasm for lying outside after dark, staring up at the stars. It isn't only the beauty of the night sky that thrills me. It's the sense I have that some of those points of light are the home stars of beings not so different from us, daily cares and all, who look across space with wonder, just as we do.
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