Since time immemorial, the scientific world had a fixed perspective of scientific progress until Thomas Kuhn’s book “The Structure of Scientific Revolution Review” came through (Schiller, 2015). Kuhn argued that rather than scientific progress being cumulative, it is dependent on revolutions that are caused by anomalies, which often are not part of the predicted outcome of any given scientific experiment.
According to Schiller, Kuhn focused on three things that could help the scientific world understand that the old notion of scientific progress was not valid. First, he mentioned that paradigm is what forms the foundation of Science. This statement means that scientific experiments are carried out with an expected outcome based on an earlier set framework to build one’s work. He mentioned that Science is divided into normal Science and extraordinary Science. Normal Science involves experiments that have a predefined outcome. In contrast, extraordinary Science is one that digs deep to find out the results of an anomaly while conducting any scientific experiment, do a test of idealism. Finally, a shift within a paradigm provides opens a window to scientists to try and get a new result or new perception about Science. For example, the discovery of Uranus by William Herschel juggled the minds of more astronauts and motivated them to study more. Eventually, more planets were discovered, an addition to the six that had earlier been found.
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Kuhn likens a scientific paradigm to political revolutions that should be flexible in accepting any change. The way a political system is questioned to gauge whether it still suits the people and if there is a need for it to be reevaluated is the same way a scientific paradigm gives room for contrasting evidence-based arguments among scientists, and whoever has convincing reasons has his ideology adopted.
Kuhn’s approach to Science relying on paradigm as a background of building a scientific experiment is right to me too. Just like a school-based science experiment, our assessors often know the outcome of any given experiment they ask us to perform. Failing to get the desired results somehow makes us fail in an experimental test. Besides, I used to believe that discrepancies in any scientific research allow researchers to conduct more experiments and come up with discoveries. Conclusively, I wholesomely agree to Thomas Kuhn’s perspective of scientific progress as being revolution-based and not cumulative.
Reference
Schiller, C., 2015. Thomas Kuhn’S The Structure Of Scientific Revolutions Review . [online] The Next Web.
