Kuhn’s Paradigms: Changing Science

“Why should a change of paradigm be called a revolution?”, asked Thomas Kuhn. Science has never been static. Since it evolved from natural philosophy, there has been a series of revolutions in both content and style. The Scientific Revolution marks the start of the modern era, with regards to both knowledge itself and to the development of scientific methodology. The many revolutions that followed, some small, some large, have been marked by changes in perspective that Kuhn called paradigm shifts. From these have evolved our present view of science—but it is still changing, perhaps more than ever. The transition from small-scale science to big science, from hypothesis-driven science to big data, is a dramatic change in the way data are obtained. The introduction of AI-driven techniques to analyze data may result in an equally dramatic change in the intellectual conduct of science.