Cognitive Scaffold

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MENTAL MODEL · M13307

Scientific Revolutions

Scientific Revolutions
TechnicalHigh supportScientific Methodology
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Updated 2026-09-10

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INTRODUCTION

English translation pending.

CORE DEFINITION

Since Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, scientific revolutions have become an important philosophical topic. The debate centers on whether revolutions in the strict Kuhnian sense really occurred, and what a Kuhnian revolution amounts to. Kuhn pictured normal science as puzzle-solving under a paradigm, with crises and anomalies occasionally triggering a Gestalt-like switch to a new paradigm whose concepts and standards do not translate cleanly into the old ones.

SCAFFOLDING EFFECT

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- Paradigm identification: detect whether the two sides of a dispute are working with different problems and standards. - Anomaly assessment: judge whether a counterexample is a puzzle awaiting solution or a signal of paradigm crisis. - Change classification: distinguish gradual accumulation from conceptual reorganization.

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The crux of a Kuhnian revolution is that a paradigm shift is not cumulative: old and new paradigms are incommensurable in their problems, standards, and concepts, so the shift resembles a Gestalt reorganization rather than the gradual accumulation of evidence. This raises two hard questions at once: whether scientific change is rational, and whether progress across a revolution is even possible.

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Source support: Explicit

  • link
    plato.stanford.eduhttps://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-revolutions/ZH · Explicit
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