"I know it's hard to convince you, but life is too short to be writing conclusions for introductions that shouldn't have been written in the first place."
.. and on that note...
The Lexicon to Understanding Our Lovely Kuhn:
Paradigm: 'to show, an example.'
Definition: 'a term that must be defined by opposing terms.'
For example: In respect to its historicity : internal coherence. Arbitrary : necessary. Ambiguity : modeled or articulated. Structure : revolution. Specification : normal. Past : future.
A paradigm, according to Kuhn, is both precedent and unprecedented. It is open ended and exclusive. The paradigm sets the puzzle, gives the answer and sets the parameters of the answer. The puzzle, the paradigm itself, contains the answers it is set to solve in the first place. Failure within the paradigm brings about a new paradigm. The paradigm, according to our celebrated Kuhn, is self destructive and self solving. The paradigm is the model by which Kuhn views the evolution within normal science. Normal science means research firmly based upon one or more past scientific achievements, achievements that some particular scientific community acknowledges for a time as supplying the foundation for its further practice. These achievements can be called paradigms. This movement is not linear or straightforward [like Fleck's structure of self moving history] but revolutionary. The successive transition from one paradigm to another via revolution is the usual developmental pattern of mature science. This revolution starts in what Kuhn calls the 'pre-paradigmatic' period when the facts of the current paradigm begin to be challenged by researches who all confront the same problem in different ways. There can be numerous pre-paradigms existing at the same time independently, eventually a new paradigm emerges from the pre-paradigm competition. To be accepted as a paradigm, a theory must seem better than its competitors, but it need not, and in fact never does, explain all the facts with which it can be confronted. Eventually the other pre-paradigmatic competitors and the previous paradigm will disappear. A paradigm transforms a group into a discipline with it's own facts and books. Paradigms gain their status because they're more successful than their competitors in solving a few problems that the group of researchers recognize as acute. This is when normal science occurs. The paradigm is like a box which researchers try to stuff nature in to. There is no effort to discover anomalies, and even when they occur they're usually ignored or go unnoticed. There is no effort create new theories. Normal scientific research is directed to the articulation of those phenomena and theories that the paradigm already supplies. This tunnel like vision researchers have when in a paradigm is important because it allows for them to investigate some part of nature in a detail and depth that would otherwise be unimaginable. It is not until the paradigm stops functioning that it is possible for researchers to become aware of and recognize anomalies. Anomalies are all known exceptions related to the generally accepted pattern of normal behavior. This period of the revolution can be called crisis science which is when the emergence of a new theory is generated by the persistent failure of the puzzles of normal science to be solved as they should through recognizing and analyzing anomalies. Although anomalies challenge the current paradigm, scientists will not loose faith in the current paradigm without another credible alternative. Often times there will be competing anomalies at the same time, or an anomaly will be discarded after being analyzed but further explored by the community in a later generation that has the proper tools to solve the problem. It is the recognition that the current paradigm is no longer functioning and accepting the emergence of anomalies, even seeking them out that can be called originality. The revolution occurs when the anomaly becomes normal, is eventually expected, and this is the internal momentum that regenerates the revolution. Paradigms seem invisible because the revolutions reflexivity is internally moving as a community and the view of history is nonlinear. The understanding comes at the end, not the beginning. To keep the revolution moving, in all areas of science and art, it is important to have originality. It is important for researchers to see the problem that nobody else sees because that is the internal momentum of Kuhn's model. The community must see paradigm change as progress, as we have seen, this perception is, in important respects, self-fulfilling. An idiot can solve a problem, but to keep the structure intact, it takes 'researchers' to take a new view, and discover the problem nobody else sees and reflexively it can reset the puzzle and provide the parameters and answer itself.
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