Crisis Resolution and Scientific Revolution

Three routes exist for crisis resolution within a normal scientific community. First, the community may forestall the crisis by proposing an adjustment to the received paradigm, provided that this adjustment is plausible enough to decrease the severity of the paradigm’s perceived inadequacies. Second, the community may, after repeated failures to explain the crisis-inducing problem(s) satisfactorily, defer this problem(s) indefinitely to future, scientific research. In both these cases, the crisis finds its resolution, however tenuously, in fresh reaffirmation of the received paradigm (Kuhn 84–85).

Yet, most radically, the community may adopt a third response in which they allow the crisis to create “extraordinary science,” which exhibits “a willingness to try anything, the expression of explicit discontent [with the received paradigm], [and the] recourse to philosophy and . . . debate over fundamentals” (Kuhn 91). Extraordinary science’s openness to abandon old paradigms provides an occasion for “scientific revolutions,” or major changes in these reigning paradigms (Kuhn 34, 90). Still, beyond the simple occasions for revolutions that extraordinary science provides, for revolutions to occur, viable alternatives must exist for whatever paradigm may potentially be rejected. For, only in these alternative paradigms are extraordinary science’s occasions for revolution met with positive invitations to changes of paradigmatic allegiance (Kuhn 76–77; cf. Carson 88).


In this post:

D. A. Carson
D. A. Carson
Thomas Kuhn
Thomas Kuhn

Some of the links above may be “affiliate links.” If you make a purchase or sign up for a service through one of these links, I may receive a small commission from the seller. This process involves no additional cost to you and helps defray the costs of making content like this available. For more information, please see these affiliate disclosures.


4 responses to “Crisis Resolution and Scientific Revolution”

  1. Kirk Lowery Avatar
    Kirk Lowery

    I recommend James Gleick, Chaos: Making a New Science (1988) for an excellent modern example of such a paradigm shift and experience of the poor researchers of UCSC.

    1. David Stark Avatar

      That does look like an interesting one, Kirk. Thanks so much. I’ll definitely have to give Gleick a look also.

      1. Kirk Lowery Avatar
        Kirk Lowery

        I’ve read most of what Gleick has written. He has a nice bio of Fenyman (“Genius”). An excellent author on the natural sciences.

        1. David Stark Avatar

          Sounds great. Thanks, again.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.


Posted

by