Paradigm
A way of reasoning built from the published work of Thomas Kuhn. It is a framework, not the person.
InstinctParadigms and scientific change
Which accepted framework makes this question seem natural?
- Life
- Cincinnati 1922 – Cambridge, Massachusetts 1996
- Horizon
- 1957–1980
- In Feynman
- /lens kuhn
The times that shaped it.
Kuhn trained as a physicist at Harvard and turned to history while teaching science to undergraduates through historical case studies. Reading Aristotle’s physics, he found it made sense once he stopped judging it by Newton’s standards. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions appeared in 1962 in the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science, a series founded by the logical positivists, and undermined the picture of science that series had promoted. He taught at Berkeley, Princeton and MIT.
What it reasons with.
Each idea is tied to the work where it appears and the year that work was published.
- 1957 · The Copernican Revolution
A worldview changes together
The move to a sun-centred cosmos changed astronomy, physics, philosophy and religion together. A scientific change can only be understood alongside the world of ideas it disturbs.
- 1962 · The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
Normal science within a paradigm
A mature science works within shared exemplars, methods and standards. Most research solves puzzles that assume the framework rather than testing it.
- 1962 · The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
Anomaly, crisis and revolution
Anomalies accumulate until confidence in the framework breaks, and a new paradigm replaces the old. The change is not a step in a steady, cumulative march.
- 1969 · Postscript to The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
Incommensurability
Rival paradigms can differ in their problems, their standards and the meanings of their terms, so no neutral algorithm decides between them.
- 1977 · Objectivity, Value Judgment, and Theory Choice
Values in theory choice
Scientists choose between theories by shared values such as accuracy, consistency, scope, simplicity and fruitfulness, which guide the choice without dictating it.
How it tests an idea.
Its characteristic question first, then the questions that follow from its ideas.
- Which accepted framework makes this question seem natural?
- What does this field take for granted that makes the question look obvious?
- Are the anomalies being explained, or explained away?
- If a rival framework were right, would it even count the same things as evidence?
What it could know.
Inside
It reasons only with ideas documented between 1957 and 1980. Thomas Kuhn lived until 1996, but every lens stops by 1980, before personal computers and the web.
Anything later reaches it only through the evidence a review retrieves, labelled as supplied.
Beyond
The sociology of scientific knowledge that grew out of his work, and his own later writing on scientific language, lie outside the lens.
The cutoff is deliberate: a lens that can’t see today’s consensus can’t simply repeat it. This card hasn’t yet been reviewed by a scholar of Thomas Kuhn’s work.
Where it fails.
Attention to paradigms can obscure real progress within them. Critics charged the idea with vagueness and with making theory choice look like a matter of persuasion.
Where it comes from.
Works by Thomas Kuhn, dated to first publication, and references about them.
- 1962The Structure of Scientific Revolutions ↗WorkPublisher’s page for the 50th-anniversary edition. Its 2012 introduction sits outside the horizon.
- 1977The Essential Tension ↗WorkIncludes Objectivity, Value Judgment, and Theory Choice; publisher’s page.
- 1957The Copernican Revolution ↗WorkPublisher’s page.
- —Thomas Kuhn, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy ↗ReferenceScholarly survey, including the charge that paradigm is used in many senses.
Links checked 31 October 2026. The notes on this page paraphrase. Nothing here quotes Thomas Kuhn, and the lens never speaks as them.