How Science Actually Progresses Over Time

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions written by Thomas Kuhn is a book on the philosophy of science. It doesn’t aim to explain anything within the field of science, but rather how science as a whole has developed over time and thus how it will, in turn, develop in the future.

The entire book is based on one central idea being, that scientific progress isn’t a linear process of experimentation and data accumulation, but rather breakthrough moments that disrupt accepting thinking and occur outside of so-called normal science.

Kuhn calls this a paradigm shift and has somewhat popularized this term in the modern world. A paradigm shift is a complete restructuring of our understanding of a certain set of facts. It’s when we question our assumptions and beliefs that are at the foundation of the current scientific worldview and replace them we a new and improved set of assumptions and beliefs that are more tailored to the external and objective world than the previous paradigm was.

Examples of a paradigm-shift might include Copernicus and the Heliocentric Universe, Newtonian Physics, and Einsteinian Relativism. These weren’t created by more data and linear progress but instead represent an unprecedented leap in progress to a whole new way of viewing the world.

And paradigm shifts aren’t obvious and put into place within a short amount of time. Usually, it takes decades upon decades for a new-paradigm to be completely put into place. This usually involves that the older scientists pass away before the newer scientists, with more liberal and rebellious ideas are every to take over.

Kuhn figured this out by studying every major scientific breakthrough that we have records of and coming to this surprising conclusion. The heretics are the ones that push science the most, not the ones that stick to the rules and constrain their search only within the given paradigm of the day.