Many readers will say that what changes with a paradigm shift in science is only how scientists interpret their observations, not what they see. Scientists have sometimes described that a paradigm shift in science is like a flash of inspiration, or scales falling away from their eyes, rather than a deliberate understanding of the material. They’re resolved by a sudden understanding or change in perception resembling the gestalt shift. Scientific crises aren’t resolved by study and interpretation-that would be normal science, which by definition can’t fix a crisis. Scientists have only their instruments and observations to rely on. However, in science, there is no higher source of authority or information. This allowed the subject to begin shifting his perspective of what a playing card could be.
However, as we’ve said before, accepting a new paradigm means rejecting the old one, as if seeing a rabbit meant that you could never see the duck again.įinally, in psychological experiments there are external forces helping the gestalt shift-for example, in the card experiment described earlier, there was someone there to tell the subject that he had been looking at a black five of hearts. In a gestalt shift, such as with the picture which could be seen as a duck or a rabbit, either interpretation is correct-or at least, one isn’t more correct than the other. A period when scientific perceptions can switch back and forth is, by definition, a crisis. A scientist who now views the world through a Copernican paradigm can never go back to Ptolemy. On the other hand, scientific revolutions generally go one way, and they are irreversible. The subject can even learn to make the switch at will. Gestalt shifts can go either way-from duck to rabbit or rabbit to duck, and back again. However, there are important differences between a simple gestalt shift and a paradigm shift in science. In psychology, a gestalt shift is when your perception of something suddenly changes-like a picture that you can see as either a rabbit or a duck (but never both at once). Perhaps even more importantly, they see new information in studies they’ve done before. Scientists ask different questions, follow different rules, and even use different terms (or use the same terms differently) after a paradigm change. When there is a paradigm shift in science, it could be said that the entire discipline changes with it. Keep reading to learn about paradigm shift in science and what happens in its aftermath. A paradigm shift doesn’t just change how scientists interpret their observations, but also what they see (i.e. What is a paradigm shift in science? How does a paradigm shift change scientists’ observations and interpretations of the objects of their study?Ī paradigm shift in science occurs when there is a fundamental change in the conceptual and experimental framework that upholds the whole scientific discipline.
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Like this article? Sign up for a free trial here. Shortform has the world's best summaries and analyses of books you should be reading. This article is an excerpt from the Shortform book guide to "The Structure Of Scientific Revolutions" by Thomas Kuhn.
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