paradigm as used by Thomas Kuhn (The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 1962), a set of scientific and metaphysical beliefs that make up a theoretical framework within which scientific theories can be tested, evaluated, and if necessary revised. Kuhn’s principal thesis, in which the notion of a paradigm plays a central role, is structured around an argument against the logical empiricist view of scientific theory change. Empiricists viewed theory change as an ongoing smooth and cumulative process in which empirical facts, discovered through observation or experimentation, forced revisions in our theories and thus added to our ever-increasing knowledge of the world. It was claimed that, combined with this process of revision, there existed a process of intertheoretic reduction that enabled us to understand the macro in terms of the micro, and that ultimately aimed at a unity of science. Kuhn maintains that this view is incompatible with what actually happens in case after case in the history of science. Scientific change occurs by ‘revolutions’ in which an older paradigm is overthrown and is replaced by a framework incompatible or even incommensurate with it. Thus the alleged empirical ‘facts,’ which were adduced to support the older theory, become irrelevant to the new; the questions asked and answered in the new framework cut across those of the old; indeed the vocabularies of the two frameworks make up different languages, not easily intertranslatable. These episodes of revolution are separated by long periods of ‘normal science,’ during which the theories of a given paradigm are honed, refined, and elaborated. These periods are sometimes referred to as periods of ‘puzzle solving,’ because the changes are to be understood more as fiddling with the details of the theories to ‘save the phenomena’ than as steps taking us closer to the truth.
A number of philosophers have complained that Kuhn’s conception of a paradigm is too imprecise to do the work he intended for it. In fact, Kuhn, fifteen years later, admitted that at least two distinct ideas were exploited by the term: (i) the ‘shared elements [that] account for the relatively unproblematic character of professional communication and for the relative unanimity of professional judgment,’ and (ii) ‘concrete problem solutions, accepted by the group [of scientists] as, in a quite usual sense, paradigmatic’ (Kuhn, ‘Second Thoughts on Paradigms,’ 1977). Kuhn offers the terms ‘disciplinary matrix’ and ‘exemplar’, respectively, for these two ideas.
See also KUHN, LOGICAL POSITIVISM , PHI- LOSOPHY OF SCIENCE , REDUCTION , UNITY OF SCIENC. B.E.