Thursday, August 9, 2007

Scientific paradigm

Main articles: Paradigm shift, Sociology of knowledge, Systemics, Commensurability (philosophy of science), and Confirmation holism

Philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn gave this word its contemporary meaning when he adopted it to refer to the set of practices that define a scientific discipline during a particular period of time. Kuhn himself came to prefer the terms exemplar and normal science, which have more exact philosophical meanings. However, in his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions Kuhn defines a scientific paradigm as:

* what is to be observed and scrutinized,
* the kind of questions that are supposed to be asked and probed for answers in relation to this subject,
* how these questions are to be structured,
* how the results of scientific investigations should be interpreted.

Alternatively, the Oxford English Dictionary defines paradigm as "A pattern or model, an exemplar". Thus an additional component of Kuhn's definition of paradigm is:

* how is an experiment to be conducted, and what equipment is available to conduct the experiment.

Thus, within normal science, the paradigm is the set of exemplary experiments that are likely to be copied or emulated. The prevailing paradigm often represents a more specific way of viewing reality, or limitations on acceptable programs for future research, than the much more general scientific method.

An example of a currently accepted paradigm would be the standard model of physics. The scientific method would allow for orthodox scientific investigations of many phenomena which might contradict or disprove the standard model; however grant funding would be more difficult to obtain for such experiments, in proportion to the amount of departure from accepted standard model theory which the experiment would test for. For example, an experiment to test for the mass of the neutrino or decay of the proton (small departures from the model) would be more likely to receive money than experiments to look for the violation of the conservation of momentum, or ways to engineer reverse time travel.

A more disparaging term groupthink, and the term mindset, have very similar meanings that apply to smaller and larger scale examples of disciplined thought. Michel Foucault used the terms episteme and discourse, mathesis and taxinomia, for aspects of a "paradigm" in Kuhn's original sense.

Simple common analogy. A simplified analogy for paradigm is box in the commonly used phrase "thinking outside the box". Thinking inside the box is analogical with normal science. The box encompasses the thinking of normal science and thus the box is analogical with paradigm.

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