Scientific Revolution - Research Paper Example

Therefore, the important figures of the development of scientific thinking appear to be the colleagues, who worked on common range of problems and were guided by the same set of rules. The detailed analysis of scientific history and philosophy found an extremely distorted and romanticized picture of the actual situation. It turned out that the history of science was not as straightforward as it had been represented before. Despite the technological successes, the science not necessarily brings us to more accurate description of the reality.

The most famous representative of such views was an American physicist and historian of science Thomas Kuhn. The current paper makes an attempt to analyze Copernicus’ discoveries from the position of Kuhn’s theory and his concept of “scientific revolution”. We will also try to find the gaps in the theory to see if the claim for the universalism of his paradigm is legitimate. Kuhn’s interest in the development of scientific theories and scientific revolutions grew out from the consideration of the fundamental differences between social and natural sciences.

During his investigations, Kuhn became convinced that, in historical perspective, the development of science is far from smoothness and uniqueness. . The paradigm is as essential for science in terms of observation and experiment. Allegiance to the certain paradigm is a crucial condition of any serious scientific affair. Science cannot observe and recognize the diversity of a particular phenomenon, because it is not able to conduct all possible experiments and perform all laboratory and clinical tests.

In this respect, the scientist has to reduce the studied problem to the working volume. His choice of the set of methodological tools and ideas will be dictated by the system of beliefs of the paradigm he belongs to (Marcum 61). When most of the scientific community accepts a paradigm, it becomes mandatory guide. Once the paradigm is taken, it grows as a powerful catalyst for scientific progress. Kuhn called this stage “normal science” (Marcum 59). Most of the scientists are engaged in normal science all the time, and that is why this particular part of scientific activity has become a synonymous of science in general.

Normal science is based on the assumption that the scientific community knows what the Universe is. While the existence of the paradigm is taken for granted, only the problems for which the solution can be assumed are considered legitimate. The latter guarantees the quick success of normal science. In such circumstances, the scientific community restraints and suppresses any novelty, because innovations are harmful to the main duty of the community. Paradigm determines the field of solved questions, imposes acceptable methods, and set of standard solutions.

Normal science solves the problems, but produces a little new (Marcum 60). At the certain stages of development of science paradigm becomes a conceptual “straitjacket”