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A paradigm shift is a phrase that was popularized by American physicist Thomas Kuhn to describe the nature of scientific revolutions, or fundamental changes in the basic concepts and experimental practices of a . Kuhn contrasts these shifts to the activity of normal science, which he characterized as scientific work done within a prevailing framework (or paradigm). In this context, the word "paradigm" is used in its original meaning, as "example" (Greek: ''παραδειγμα''). The nature of scientific revolutions has been a question posed by modern philosophy since Immanuel Kant used the phrase in the preface to his Critique of Pure Reason (1781), referring to Greek mathematics and Newtonian physics. In the 20th century, new crises in the basic concepts of mathematics, physics, and biology, revitalized interest in the question among scholars. It was against this active background that Kuhn published his work. Kuhn presented his notion of a paradigm shift in his influential book ''The Structure of Scientific Revolutions'' (1962). As one commentator summarizes: Since the 1960s, the concept of a paradigm shift has also been used in numerous non-scientific contexts to describe a profound change in a fundamental model or perception of events, even though Kuhn himself restricted the use of the term to the hard sciences. == Kuhnian paradigm shifts == An epistemological paradigm shift was called a "scientific revolution" by epistemologist and historian of science Thomas Kuhn in his book ''The Structure of Scientific Revolutions''. A scientific revolution occurs, according to Kuhn, when scientists encounter anomalies that cannot be explained by the universally accepted paradigm within which scientific progress has thereto been made. The paradigm, in Kuhn's view, is not simply the current theory, but the entire worldview in which it exists, and all of the implications which come with it. This is based on features of landscape of knowledge that scientists can identify around them. There are anomalies for all paradigms, Kuhn maintained, that are brushed away as acceptable levels of error, or simply ignored and not dealt with (a principal argument Kuhn uses to reject Karl Popper's model of falsifiability as the key force involved in scientific change). Rather, according to Kuhn, anomalies have various levels of significance to the practitioners of science at the time. To put it in the context of early 20th century physics, some scientists found the problems with calculating Mercury's perihelion more troubling than the Michelson-Morley experiment results, and some the other way around. Kuhn's model of scientific change differs here, and in many places, from that of the logical positivists in that it puts an enhanced emphasis on the individual humans involved as scientists, rather than abstracting science into a purely logical or philosophical venture. When enough significant anomalies have accrued against a current paradigm, the scientific discipline is thrown into a state of ''crisis,'' according to Kuhn. During this crisis, new ideas, perhaps ones previously discarded, are tried. Eventually a ''new'' paradigm is formed, which gains its own new followers, and an intellectual "battle" takes place between the followers of the new paradigm and the hold-outs of the old paradigm. Again, for early 20th century physics, the transition between the Maxwellian electromagnetic worldview and the Einsteinian relativistic worldview was neither instantaneous nor calm, and instead involved a protracted set of "attacks," both with empirical data as well as rhetorical or philosophical arguments, by both sides, with the Einsteinian theory winning out in the long run. Again, the weighing of evidence and importance of new data was fit through the human sieve: some scientists found the simplicity of Einstein's equations to be most compelling, while some found them more complicated than the notion of Maxwell's aether which they banished. Some found Eddington's photographs of light bending around the sun to be compelling, while some questioned their accuracy and meaning. Sometimes the convincing force is just time itself and the human toll it takes, Kuhn said, using a quote from Max Planck: "a new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."〔Quoted in Thomas Kuhn, ''The Structure of Scientific Revolutions'' (1970 ed.): p. 150.〕 After a given discipline has changed from one paradigm to another, this is called, in Kuhn's terminology, a ''scientific revolution'' or a ''paradigm shift''. It is often this final conclusion, the result of the long process, that is meant when the term ''paradigm shift'' is used colloquially: simply the (often radical) change of worldview, without reference to the specificities of Kuhn's historical argument. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Paradigm shift」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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