Paradigm Shifts

Submitted by Robert (United States), Aug 31, 2010 at 19:00

I have not read the works referenced, but I have always thought that a paradigm referred to a basic example, a case that set the pattern, not the pattern itself. So if you are going to discuss paradigms and paradigm shifts, you discuss the case, identify its characteristics and then compare them to real existents which do or do not follow the paradigm. The method followed by Mr. Kuhn appears to mistake the patterns as the paradigms and is fraught with thinking by means of non-essentials which distorts the basic paradigms and their offshoots. For instance, Aristotleanism and Newtonianism are not two paradigms but examples of the same paradigm, science which is the method of using induction correctly. Science is the example, the paradigm. Likewise, the United States would be a paradigm (an example) according to which other states can be compared. You make the comparison with its essential institutions and fundamental principles. Since it is not a "nation-state" it cannot fit the paradigm that Kuhn postulates and makes Kuhn's arguments nothing more than Kantian mush...meaningless but deadly.

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