Technology and Gadgets

The main articles: paradigm shift, sociology of knowledge, Systemics, Commensurability (philosophy of science), and Confirmation holism

Historian of science Thomas Kuhn gave the word its contemporary meaning when he adopted it to describe all practices that define a scientific discipline during a period of time. Kuhn himself came to prefer the terms model and normal science, which are more accurate philosophical sense. However, in his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions Kuhn defines a scientific paradigm:

1. What must be observed and examined
2. The type of questions that are supposed to be asked and answers sounded
a report thereon
3. How these issues should be structured
4. How the results of scientific research should be interpreted

Otherwise, the Oxford English Dictionary defines a paradigm as "a model or a model, a model." Thus, an additional component of Kuhn, the definition of paradigm is:

* How is an experiment to be carried out, and what equipment is available to conduct the experiment.

Thus, in normal science, the paradigm is all copies of experiences that are likely to be copied or imitated. The dominant paradigm is often a more specific way of viewing reality, or limitations programmes acceptable for future research, that much more general of the scientific method.

An example of a paradigm is the currently accepted standard model of physics. The scientific method would scientific research Orthodox many phenomena that might contradict or refute the standard model, but subsidies would be more difficult to obtain for such experiments, in proportion to the amount of departure from accepted standard model theory would experience d 'test. For example, an experiment to test the mass of neutrinos or decomposition of the proton (small departures from the model) would be more likely to receive money that experiments in search of the violation of conservation of momentum, or how to reverse engineer time travel.

An important aspect of paradigms Kuhn, is that paradigms are immeasurable, which means that two paradigms can not be compared to each other. A new paradigm that replaces an old paradigm is not necessarily better, because the criteria for judgement depend on the paradigm.

A more disparaging term groupthink, and the term of mind, have a very similar that apply to small and larger-scale examples of disciplined thought. Michel Foucault used the words episteme and discourse, Mathesis taxinomia and for aspects of a "paradigm" of Kuhn in the original sense.

Commune simple analogy: A simplified version of paradigm for analogy is a habit or reasoning, the box in the commonly used phrase "Thinking Outside the Box." Thinking inside the box is similar to normal science. The box includes the thought of science normal and, hence, the box is similar to the paradigm. "Leaving the beaten path 'is what Kuhn called revolutionary science. Revolutionary of science is generally failed, and only rarely leads to new paradigms. When they are they lead to large-scale changes in the scientific world.