THOMAS KUHN

As we touched on at the

beginning of the chapter, Thomas

Kuhn criticized Popper's analysis

by introducing the concept of

paradigm shift (The Structure of

Scientific Revolutions, 1962). In

his opinion, in fact, a scientific

community is not constituted on

the basis of a falsifi- cationist

methodology, but springs out of

 the uncritical and dogmatic

acceptance of a way of thinking

(paradigm).

Kuhn divided the scientific

process into two phases: normal

science and extraordinary (or

revolutionary) science. During the

first phase, the majority of

scientists work on the basis of

[what they call] the current

paradigm accepted by the

scientific community, following

Popper's ideas on falsifiability.

At this point, says Kuhn,

anomalies are created within the

com- monly accepted paradigm

and phenomena, that models

accepted by the scientific

community are unable to explain.

In this cycle,

the impossibility

of using the old

 models to ex-

plain reality is

recognized and

new ones are

sought (although

most of them

are destined to

be refuted).

Eventually,

however, a new

para- digm is
 created, and the

old one is

This parabola- enough anomalies

shaped lava flow accumulate, some

illustrates the scientists begin to

application of work within the so-

mathematics in called

physics—in this "extraordinary

case, Galileo's science".

law of falling

bodies. When
 eliminated. paradigm and

By the new one,

thoroughly Kuhn described

analyzing the a new idea of

passage demarcation:

between the old the

new paradigm was commonly

accepted, for it was able to better

solve problems (elitist

authoritarianism).
 Ultimately, the American

historian and philosopher paved

the way for the analysis of the

subjectivity of scientific progress.

This completely capsized when

contemporary Paul Feyerabend

published his most famous work,

Against the Method (1975):

“The fundamental characteristic of science is

its rejection of any dogmatism, which

translates into the openness to any

methodology; any attempt to find an order in

the world of science, by creating schemes to

rigorously define the processes of research and

discovery, is only doomed to failure, and this

due to the intrinsic nature of the path of

discovery, which cannot be restricted or limited

by the norms of a rigid method (problem of

incommensurability).”