{"id":8682,"date":"2019-05-22T16:10:22","date_gmt":"2019-05-22T16:10:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/paradigm_shift\/"},"modified":"2019-05-22T16:10:22","modified_gmt":"2019-05-22T16:10:22","slug":"paradigm_shift","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/paradigm_shift\/","title":{"rendered":"Paradigm shift"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A concept put forward by Thomas S. Kuhn (1922-1996) in his book <a href=\"http:\/\/philosophy.wisc.edu\/forster\/220\/kuhn.htm\" class=\"cc-route-enabled\" data-editable-link=\"http:\/\/philosophy.wisc.edu\/forster\/220\/kuhn.htm&amp;target=_self\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span class=\"\" style=\"font-style: italic;\">The structure of scientific revolutions<\/span> <\/a>(1962) to denote a rapid and discontinuous change from one paradigm to another (i.e., a &#8216;scientific revolution&#8217;) due to a growing dissatisfaction with the guiding principles and theory in a particular scientific community. &nbsp;A frequently cited example is the change in physics from Newtonian mechanics to <a href=\"http:\/\/csep10.phys.utk.edu\/astr161\/lect\/history\/einstein.html\" data-editable-link=\"http:\/\/csep10.phys.utk.edu\/astr161\/lect\/history\/einstein.html&amp;target=_self\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Einstein&#8217;s theory of relativity<\/a>, and perhaps another is the switch in psychology from behaviorism to cognitivism (the so-called cognitive revolution). &nbsp;It is questionable whether such qualitative change is a widespread phenomenon as Kuhn held as scientists have the tendency to tinker around with existing theories until they fit with any new challenging findings. &nbsp;Another aspect of Kuhn&#8217;s framework is that competing paradigms in science are often incommensurable with each other, a viewpoint that argues against ultimately finding a theory of everything. &nbsp;An example in psychology is current incompatibility of information-processing theories and those resting on dynamical systems approaches.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>See <a href=\"behaviorism\">Behaviorism<\/a>, <a href=\"dynamical_systems_approaches\">Dynamical systems approaches<\/a>, <a href=\"hixon_symposium\">Hixon symposium<\/a>, <a href=\"information-processing_theories\">Information-processing theories<\/a>, <a href=\"newtonian_-or_classical-_mechanics\">Newtonian (or classical) mechanics<\/a>, <a href=\"paradigm\">Paradigm<\/a>, <a href=\"principle\">Principle<\/a>, <a href=\"theory_of_everything_-toe-\">Theory of Everything (ToE)<\/a><\/p>\n<p><\/body><\/html><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A concept put forward by Thomas S. Kuhn (1922-1996) in his book The structure of scientific revolutions (1962) to denote a rapid and discontinuous change from one paradigm to another (i.e., a &#8216;scientific revolution&#8217;) due to a growing dissatisfaction with the guiding principles and theory in a particular scientific community. &nbsp;A frequently cited example is &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/paradigm_shift\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Paradigm shift&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2],"class_list":["post-8682","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-glossary","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8682","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8682"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8682\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}