Kuhnian Model

Category: Epistemology

Last Updated: 15 Feb 2021

Pages: 2 Views: 236

According to many science is a steady progression of accrual of new ideas but to Kuhn science was as a result of occasional revolutionary explosions of new knowledge whereby each revolution was triggered by introduction of new ways of thought that were so large that he called them paradigms. These paradigms according to Kuhn were supposed to generally recognize scientific achievements, present model problems and solutions for group of researchers. A paradigm is supposed to describe; How the outcome of most scientific investigations should be interpreted. What is to be observed and scrutinized? The kind of questions that are supposed to be asked and probed for answers in relation to this subject. The Kuhnian model consists of five main steps which include: Prescience- it has no workable paradigm to guide its work successfully. Normal science- it is a normal step where the field has a scientifically based model of understanding a paradigm that works Model drift- here the model of understanding starts to drift. This is due to accumulation of anomalies and events the model cannot explain. Model crisis- the previous step becomes so excessive the model is broken.

It can therefore no longer serve as a reliable guide to problem solving. Any attempts to patch the model up to work will fail hence the field is in anguish. The new fields normally begin in prescience where they have begun to focus on a problem area but are not yet capable of making major advances. Working techniques that later provide a model of understanding eventually works hence this will put the field in normal science step. In this step it takes longer. As time passes by new questions arise but the current model of understanding cannot answer this puts it in the model drift step. The model crisis step is reached later if the anomalies appear and the model cannot be patched up to explain them unfortunately it tends to fail due to guesswork and intuition.

At long last the model revolution begins. It is a revolution because the new model is a new paradigm. It’s radically different from the old paradigm. This makes the believers in both paradigms not to communicate well. The paradigm change step begins when the new paradigm is settled on by a few influential supporters. After field transitions from the old to the new paradigm occur the old paradigm is sufficiently replaced and becomes the field’s new normal science. Guess what happens next? The cycle begins again because our knowledge about the world is never complete.

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