Title: `The Structure of Scientific Revolutions` Author: Thomas S. Kuhn

p BOOK REVIEW : THE STRUCTURE OF SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTIONS BY THOMAS S . KUHN

In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Thomas A . Khun argues that scientific progress is not a matter of the slow , steady accumulation of knowledge over time but , rather , that it is characterized by long-standing beliefs about the world being radically overturned by the discovery of new information that fails to conform to existing frameworks . He also argues that the nature of the progress of science tends to be mischaracterized in textbooks and in educational practices which typically cast the progress

of science as a cumulative acquisition of knowledge where one breakthrough follows logically from the last

In the essay , Khun uses the term paradigm ' to describe what science at large currently holds to be true about nature . The definition of a paradigm is a temporal one subject to change and any given paradigm only survives so long as it is useful to the working scientist

These [paradigms] I take to be universally recognized scientific achievements that for a time provide model problems and solutions to a community of practitioners (p . ix , he states in the book 's foreword This definition of a scientific paradigm is essential to Khun 's reasoning . Kuhn goes on to deconstruct the process by which revolutions take place , how they are generally brought to be accepted and how they influence the work and attitudes of the scientists that work within their parameters . For Kuhn , a revolution in paradigm equals a revolution in science

The paradigm is central to the work of what Khun calls normal science ' which he defines as .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 (p . 10 ' This is the stuff of text books , the academy and what forms the majority of scientific research . Much of normal science concerns itself with fitting what information is gathered by practitioners into the predefined box ' provided by the current paradigm . Described by the author as mopping up ' operations , these endeavors occupy the working lives of most scientist . Practitioners of normal science are not concerned with the discovery of new information that fails to fit the existing paradigm (p . 24

In the workplace , the word paradigm ' has taken on a much less structured definition than that used by Kuhn . A paradigm may well describe a current consensus of scientific thought and practice or it might describe a series of results expected of the practitioner by they who fund the experiments . It could describe a corporate paradigm - a word that corporations do not hesitate to use and stretch to the point of nonsense-that serves as a working model for how the business at hand ought to be carried out . The use of the word paradigm in the workplace differs significantly from Khun 's . Where Kuhn is careful to offer a clear , concise definition of the term , in the casual language of the workplace a paradigm ' can refer...