What is the role of paradigms in the development of a science? what is the relation between paradigms and theories? what were the paradigmatic phases suggested by Kuhn?

-- Meera (meera_sapra@hotmail.com), February 25, 2003

Answers

Kuhn's theory is laid out primarily in his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1960; 2nd edition 1970, University of Chicago Press). If you run a Google search using the terms "Kuhn" and "paradigm" you'll turn up many fine essays on Kuhn and his ideas.

-- Hendrika Vande Kemp (hendrika@earthlink.net), February 25, 2003.

Although psychologists have an ongoing love affair with the Kuhn's notion(s) of the scientific paradigm, and often attempt to apply it to the history of the own discipline (mistakenly calling structuralism, functionalism, psychoanalysis, behaviorism, and cognitivism "paradigms"), Kuhn was fairly clear that his model was not applicable to social sciences. It was developed primarily to explain certain events in the histories of astronomy, physics, and chemistry. If Kuhn's model is to be applied to psychoogy at all, a careful examination shows that psychology is still in the pre-paradigmatic "schools of thought" phase. (On the other hand, this whole exercise may well be misguided. Kuhn's model, although highly influential, is no longer accepted at face value by professional historians of science even with respect to the disiplines for which it was first devevloped.)

-- Christopher Green (cgreen@chass.utoronto.ca), February 28, 2003.