Can you predict and implement paradigm shifts using the paradigmatic method?

[Loren Booda]

Can you construct a procedure, in the spirit of the scientific method, that could predict and implement impending paradigm shifts?

 

[selfAdjoint]

Can you construct a procedure, in the spirit of the scientific method, that could predict and implement impending paradigm shifts?

If you ASSUME Kuhn's paradigm scheme is actually a rigorous description of scientific development, then I think you could. It would be something like detecting the approach to a phase change or the onset of chaos in condensed matter physics.

But Kuhn's theory is by no means that strong. Occasionally some scientific shift looks like what he described, such as the transition to plate techtonics, but much more often the development doesn't fit into his categories at all.

 

[franznietzsche]

If you ASSUME Kuhn's paradigm scheme is actually a rigorous description of scientific development, then I think you could. It would be something like detecting the approach to a phase change or the onset of chaos in condensed matter physics.

But Kuhn's theory is by no means that strong. Occasionally some scientific shift looks like what he described, such as the transition to plate techtonics, but much more often the development doesn't fit into his categories at all.

I disagree. The shift to Newtonian Mechanics, to Relativity, to Quantum Mechanics, To PLate Techtonics, to Evolution, from psychoanalysis to psychopharmacology (i may have just invented a word to describe the shift from therapy to medication as the predominant paradigm of treating mental illness). Science is the progress of small studies in the existing paradigm until something is found that cannot be explained. Then the paradigm shifts in a major way.