Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolution can be said to be a must-read to solve the problem of "What is science?". The main point is the paradigm shift of scientific development, and the paradigm is also incommensurable. It is a scientific "revolution" for the new paradigm to replace the old paradigm, such as Einstein's gorgeous rebellion against Newton.
Paradigm was originally a word similar to "model" and "form". Plato put forward this concept in Time to describe a method of acquiring "knowledge". In Aristotle's metaphysics, paradigm is the basic entity of everything, and Kuhn extracted something new from this word.
He defined paradigm as "the collection of beliefs, values, technologies, etc.". What the members of the community share is the theoretical basis and practical norms on which conventional science depends, and it is the world outlook and behavior pattern that a certain kind of scientific researchers collectively abide by "(the general idea).
Paradigm can be said to be a common concept among science, philosophy and various disciplines. For example, ancient Greece took Greek mythology as the paradigm, and tended to look for the foundation of all things, such as empedocles's "Four Roots Theory". The main paradigms of the Enlightenment are "humanism" and "mechanical materialism".
In the history of human development, there are three scientific and technological revolutions,/kloc-a big machine represented by Jenny in the middle of the 8th century,/kloc-a generator represented by Siemens in the middle of the 9th century, atomic energy, aerospace, computers and so on since the 20th century.
This book expounds the role of paradigm in the development of science, the pre-scientific period without paradigm (such as psychoanalysis, of course, basically stops at pre-science), the new scientific revolution period in which paradigm is established, the scientific revolution period in which paradigm is shaken, and the conventional scientific period in which paradigm is completely established.
Almost in the early stage of scientific development, there will be many schools with their own opinions, but the discipline of science will make other theories disappear. The victory of the former paradigm school will make their own beliefs and prejudices regulate other failed schools, and they will also emphasize that what they say is only a part of the imperfect truth information base.
In the establishment stage of this paradigm, there are generally two characteristics, namely the so-called scientific characteristics:
1. Their achievements can attract a group of staunch supporters and make them break away from the competitor paradigm of previous scientific activities.
2. These achievements are enough to leave all kinds of problems to the next practitioners to solve.
When the existing rules become invalid, it is a prelude to finding new rules. Just like after discovering that people evolved slowly from fish, Linnaeus's systematic classification is no longer applicable, and the classification of kinship is more "correct" and "scientific". Although not all biological disciplines, at least in the study of paleontology, the kinship paradigm has replaced the Linnaeus paradigm.