essay about research paradigm

Study of the Research Paradigm Essay

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Introduction

Research paradigm, positivism research paradigm and its relation to quantitative researches, deductive and inductive reasoning approaches.

The understanding of various approaches to identification of reality, objectivity and subjectivity of knowledge, systems of research, and methods of data collection and analysis is highly significant for modern scholars. Theoretical structure and belief system form a research paradigm, and a positivism research paradigm applies to objective investigations based on a structured system of observation. The purpose of this work is to identify a research paradigm, analyse the connection of positivism research paradigm with quantitative research, and investigate deductive and inductive reasoning approaches.

Rehman and Alharthi (2016) define a research paradigm as a “basic belief system and theoretical framework” (p. 51). It consists of four elements – ontology, epistemology, methodology, and methods (Antwi, & Hamza, 2015). Ontology refers to researchers’ beliefs about reality and its functioning. Epistemology occupies with the essence of knowledge and investigates the patterns in which knowledge is purchased and verified.

The epistemological question for every scholar is the selection between subjectivity and objectivity defined by the ontological perception of reality (Aliyu et al., 2014). Methodology presents the strategy of research, and it is a critical analysis of the required data and methods of its collection. Methods are specific activities for data collection and evaluation, and methods are defined by the researcher’s belief system and theoretical basis. Ontology and epistemology of research do not influence its methods.

Positivism research paradigm concerns exceptionally objective knowledge which can be observed and validated. In positivism studies, scholars are limited by data collection through observation and interpretation of its results in an objective credible manner. The philosophy of positivism distinguishes the world as independent, observable constituents which interact in determined, disciplined, and observable ways (Dudovskiy, n.d.).

Since the research is “the process, which aims to discover and interpret the facts that are inserted in a certain reality” (Queirós, Faria, & Almeida, 2017, p. 370), scientists distinguish quantitative and qualitative researches. Quantitative research focuses on objectivity and clearly defined classification of collected data, and all procedures and methods of data collection are identified and approved (Anney, 2015). Positivism paradigm is related to quantitative research as the objectivity of data, quantifiable observation as a research method, and non-intervention of scholar’s interests are common elements for these approaches (Choy, 2014).

Deductive reasoning approach focuses on a certain hypothesis based on existing theory. The strategy and methods of research are formulated, and the hypothesis is subsequently confirmed through observation and data collection. Deductive approach implicates the reasoning from the particular to the general (Zalaghi, & Khazaei, 2016). Deductive structured approach is used in quantitative research as the data should be quantified and validated, all methods are scientifically approved and highly structured. For instance, the employment data from 110 offices were analysed to verify the hypothesis that employee turnover and company activity have a “reversed U shaped relationship” (Tariq, 2015, p. 230), the conducted research discovered the hypothesised curvilinear dependence.

Inductive reasoning approach alternatively concentrates on reasoning from particular observations to general theory. This empirical approach is related to qualitative research as a data is not quantified, the results are analysed according to the experience, senses, and beliefs of a particular scholar (Leung, 2015). Qualitative research is a “subjective approach to explain daily life experiences and to further give them meaning” (Khan, 2014, p. 300).

For instance, during the observation of 200 customers, 195 of them were noticed in shops with the lowest prices, and only five customers attended local shops to support domestic producers (“Methods of economic analysis,” n.d.).From this observation, it is possible to make the conclusion that people prefer to buy cheap products unless they support local market regardless of prices.

Aliyu, A. A., Bello, M. U., Kasim, R., & Martin, D. (2014). Positivist and non-positivist paradigm in social science research: Conflicting paradigms or perfect partners? [Abstract]. Journal of Management and Sustainability, 4 (3), 79-83. Web.

Anney, V. N. (2015). Ensuring the quality of the findings of qualitative research: Looking at trustworthiness criteria. Journal of Emerging Trends in Educational Research and Policy Studies, 5 (2), 272-281. Web.

Antwi, S. K., & Hamza, K. (2015). Qualitative and quantitative research paradigms in business research: A philosophical reflection. European Journal of Business and Management, 7 (3), 217-225. Web.

Choy, L. T. (2014). The strengths and weaknesses of research methodology: Comparison and complimentary between qualitative and quantitative approaches. IOSR Journal of Humanities and Social Science, 19 (4), 99-104. Web.

Dudovskiy, J. (n.d.). Positivism research philosophy . Research Methodology. Web.

Methods of economic analysis . (n.d.). Web.

Khan, S. N. (2014). Qualitative research method – Phenomenology. Asian Social Science, 10 (21), 298-310. Web.

Leung, L. (2015). Validity, reliability, and generalizability in qualitative research . Journal of Family Medicine and Primary Care, 4 (3), 324-327. Web.

Queirós, A., Faria, D., & Almeida, F. (2017). Strengths and limitations of qualitative and quantitative research methods. European Journal of Education Studies, 3 (9), 369-373. Web.

Rehman, A. A. & Alharthi, K. (2016). An introduction to research paradigms . International Journal of Educational Investigations, 3 (8), 51-59. Web.

Tariq, M. U. (2015). Hypothetico-deductive method: A comparative analysis. Journal of Basic and Applied Research International, 7 (4), 228-231. Web.

Zalaghi, H., & Khazaei, M. (2016). The role of deductive and inductive reasoning in accounting research and standard setting. Asian Journal of Finance & Accounting, 8 (1), 23-37. Web.

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The Four Types of Research Paradigms: A Comprehensive Guide

5-minute read

• 22nd January 2023

In this guide, you’ll learn all about the four research paradigms and how to choose the right one for your research.

Introduction to Research Paradigms

A paradigm is a system of beliefs, ideas, values, or habits that form the basis for a way of thinking about the world. Therefore, a research paradigm is an approach, model, or framework from which to conduct research. The research paradigm helps you to form a research philosophy, which in turn informs your research methodology.

Your research methodology is essentially the “how” of your research – how you design your study to not only accomplish your research’s aims and objectives but also to ensure your results are reliable and valid. Choosing the correct research paradigm is crucial because it provides a logical structure for conducting your research and improves the quality of your work, assuming it’s followed correctly.

Three Pillars: Ontology, Epistemology, and Methodology

Before we jump into the four types of research paradigms, we need to consider the three pillars of a research paradigm.

Ontology addresses the question, “What is reality?” It’s the study of being. This pillar is about finding out what you seek to research. What do you aim to examine?

Epistemology is the study of knowledge. It asks, “How is knowledge gathered and from what sources?”

Methodology involves the system in which you choose to investigate, measure, and analyze your research’s aims and objectives. It answers the “how” questions.

Let’s now take a look at the different research paradigms.

1.   Positivist Research Paradigm

The positivist research paradigm assumes that there is one objective reality, and people can know this reality and accurately describe and explain it. Positivists rely on their observations through their senses to gain knowledge of their surroundings.

In this singular objective reality, researchers can compare their claims and ascertain the truth. This means researchers are limited to data collection and interpretations from an objective viewpoint. As a result, positivists usually use quantitative methodologies in their research (e.g., statistics, social surveys, and structured questionnaires).

This research paradigm is mostly used in natural sciences, physical sciences, or whenever large sample sizes are being used.

2.   Interpretivist Research Paradigm

Interpretivists believe that different people in society experience and understand reality in different ways – while there may be only “one” reality, everyone interprets it according to their own view. They also believe that all research is influenced and shaped by researchers’ worldviews and theories.

As a result, interpretivists use qualitative methods and techniques to conduct their research. This includes interviews, focus groups, observations of a phenomenon, or collecting documentation on a phenomenon (e.g., newspaper articles, reports, or information from websites).

3.   Critical Theory Research Paradigm

The critical theory paradigm asserts that social science can never be 100% objective or value-free. This paradigm is focused on enacting social change through scientific investigation. Critical theorists question knowledge and procedures and acknowledge how power is used (or abused) in the phenomena or systems they’re investigating.

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Researchers using this paradigm are more often than not aiming to create a more just, egalitarian society in which individual and collective freedoms are secure. Both quantitative and qualitative methods can be used with this paradigm.

4.   Constructivist Research Paradigm

Constructivism asserts that reality is a construct of our minds ; therefore, reality is subjective. Constructivists believe that all knowledge comes from our experiences and reflections on those experiences and oppose the idea that there is a single methodology to generate knowledge.

This paradigm is mostly associated with qualitative research approaches due to its focus on experiences and subjectivity. The researcher focuses on participants’ experiences as well as their own.

Choosing the Right Research Paradigm for Your Study

Once you have a comprehensive understanding of each paradigm, you’re faced with a big question: which paradigm should you choose? The answer to this will set the course of your research and determine its success, findings, and results.

To start, you need to identify your research problem, research objectives , and hypothesis . This will help you to establish what you want to accomplish or understand from your research and the path you need to take to achieve this.

You can begin this process by asking yourself some questions:

• What is the nature of your research problem (i.e., quantitative or qualitative)?
• How can you acquire the knowledge you need and communicate it to others? For example, is this knowledge already available in other forms (e.g., documents) and do you need to gain it by gathering or observing other people’s experiences or by experiencing it personally?
• What is the nature of the reality that you want to study? Is it objective or subjective?

Depending on the problem and objective, other questions may arise during this process that lead you to a suitable paradigm. Ultimately, you must be able to state, explain, and justify the research paradigm you select for your research and be prepared to include this in your dissertation’s methodology and design section.

Using Two Paradigms

If the nature of your research problem and objectives involves both quantitative and qualitative aspects, then you might consider using two paradigms or a mixed methods approach . In this, one paradigm is used to frame the qualitative aspects of the study and another for the quantitative aspects. This is acceptable, although you will be tasked with explaining your rationale for using both of these paradigms in your research.

Choosing the right research paradigm for your research can seem like an insurmountable task. It requires you to:

●  Have a comprehensive understanding of the paradigms,

●  Identify your research problem, objectives, and hypothesis, and

●  Be able to state, explain, and justify the paradigm you select in your methodology and design section.

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Research Paradigm: An Introduction with Examples

This article provides a detailed and easy-to-understand introduction to research paradigms, including examples.

If you are considering writing a research paper, you should be aware that you must set criteria for constructing the approach you will use as a methodology in your work, which is why you must comprehend the concept of the research paradigm .

A research paradigm , in simplest terms, is the process of constructing a research plan that can assist you in quickly understanding how the theories and practices of your research project work.

The purpose of this article is to introduce you to research paradigms and explain them to you in the most descriptive way possible using examples. 

What is a research paradigm?

A research paradigm is a method, model, or pattern for conducting research. It is a set of ideas, beliefs, or understandings within which theories and practices can function. The majority of paradigms derive from one of two research methodologies: positivism or interpretivism . Every research project employs one of the research paradigms as a guideline for creating research methods and carrying out the research project most legitimately and reasonably. 

Though there were essentially two paradigms, various new paradigms have arisen from these two, particularly in social science research. Keep in mind that selecting one of the paradigms for your research project demands a thorough understanding of the unique characteristics of each approach.

What are the 3 paradigms of research?

To select the best research paradigm for your project, you must first comprehend the three pillars: ontology, epistemology, and methodology.

Ontology is a philosophical theory regarding the nature of reality, asserts that there is either a single reality or none at all. To be more specific, ontology answers the question, “ What is reality? ” 

Epistemology

Epistemology is the study of knowledge, focusing on the validity, extent, and ways of gaining knowledge. Epistemology seeks to address the question, “ How can we know reality? “

Methodology

Methodology refers to general concepts that underpin how one explores the social environment and proves the validity of the knowledge gained. The methodological question is “ How to go about discovering the reality/answer? “

What is the purpose of a research paradigm?

The importance of choosing a paradigm for a research project stems from the fact that it establishes the foundation for the study’s research and its methodologies. 

A paradigm investigates how knowledge is understood and researched, and it explicitly outlines the objective, motivation, and expected outcomes of the research. 

The proper implementation of a research paradigm in research provides researchers with a clear path to examine the topic of interest. 

As a result, it gives a logical and deliberate structure for carrying it out, besides improving the quality of your work and your proficiency.

Research paradigms examples

Now that you understand the three pillars and the importance of the research paradigm, let’s look at some examples of paradigms that you may use in your research.

Positivist Paradigm

Positivists believe in a single reality that can be measured and understood. As a result, quantitative approaches are utilized to quantify this reality. 

Positivism in research is a philosophy related to the concept of real inquiry. A positivism-based research philosophy employs a rigorous approach to the systematic study of data sources.

Interpretivism or Constructivism Paradigm

The interpretivism approach is used in the majority of qualitative research conducted in the social sciences; it is predicated on the existence of numerous realities rather than a single reality. 

According to interpretivists, human behavior is complex and cannot be predicted by predefined probability. 

Human behavior is not like a scientific variable that can be easily controlled. The word interpretivism refers to methods of gaining knowledge of the universe that rely on interpreting or comprehending the meanings that humans attach to their behaviors. 

Pragmatism Paradigm

The research question determines pragmatism. Depending on the nature of the research issue, pragmatics may incorporate both positivism and interpretivism approaches within a single study. 

It is a problem-solving philosophy that maintains that the best research techniques are those that contribute to the most effective answer to the research issue. This is followed by an examination of many aspects of a research problem using a combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches. 

Postpositivism Paradigm

The positivism paradigm gave way to the postpositivism paradigm, which is more concerned with the subjectivity of reality and departs from the logical positivists’ objective perspective. 

Postpositivism seeks objective answers by striving to recognize and deal with such biases in the ideas and knowledge developed by researchers.

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Jessica Abbadia is a lawyer that has been working in Digital Marketing since 2020, improving organic performance for apps and websites in various regions through ASO and SEO. Currently developing scientific and intellectual knowledge for the community's benefit. Jessica is an animal rights activist who enjoys reading and drinking strong coffee.

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What is a Research Paradigm? Types of Research Paradigms with Examples

If you’re a researcher, you’ve probably heard the term “ research paradigm .” And, if you are a researcher, especially if you haven’t been trained under the social sciences, you are probably confused by the concept of a research paradigm . What is a research paradigm? How does it apply to my research? Why is it important? 

Research paradigms refer to the beliefs and assumptions that provide the structure for your research. These can be characteristics of your discipline or even your personal beliefs. For example, if you are a physical scientist and you are conducting research on the performance of a newly developed catalyst for removing chemical impurities from drinking water, your study is probably based on the premise that there is one reality, and your results will show that the new product either works better or it doesn’t. However, if your research discipline is education and you’re looking at the effects of parental literacy rates on the literacy or academic success of their children, you will not expect a such a definite result, and you may be examining your topic from different viewpoints, such as cultural or socio-economic. Your findings will then depend on those assumptions, beliefs, and biases.  

The rest of this article will try to clarify the concept of research paradigms, provide a research paradigm definition, and offer some examples of different types of research paradigms . While years of study may not completely clear up your confusion about research paradigms , perhaps you will think a little better of them and how they can help you in your work and maybe even in your personal life.  

Table of Contents

What is a research paradigm?  

According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, a paradigm is “ a philosophical and theoretical framework of a scientific school or discipline within which theories, laws, and generalizations and the experiments performed in support of them are formulated. ” 1 As applied in the context of research, a research paradigm is a worldview or philosophical framework, including ideas, beliefs, and biases, that guides the research process. The research paradigm in which a study is situated helps determine the manner in which the research will be conducted.  

The research paradigm is the framework into which the theories and practices of your discipline fit to create the research plan. This foundation guides all areas of your research plan, including the aim of the study, research question, instruments or measurements used, and analysis methods.   

Most research paradigms are based on one of two model types: positivism or interpretivism. These guide the theories and methodologies used in the research project. In general, positivist research paradigms lead to quantitative studies and interpretivist research paradigms lead to qualitative studies. Of course, there are many variations of both of these research paradigm types, some of which lead to mixed-method studies.  

What are the three pillars of research paradigms ?     

So, now you may be asking, what makes up a research paradigm ? How are they formed and categorized? The research paradigm framework is supported by three pillars: ontology, epistemology, and methodology. Some scholars have recently begun adding another pillar to research paradigms : ethics or axiology. However, this article will only discuss the three traditional aspects, which together define the research paradigm and provide the base on which to build your research project.  

Ontology is the study of the nature of reality. Is there a single reality, multiple realities, or no reality at all? These are the questions that the philosophy of ontology attempts to answer. The oft-used example of an ontological question is “Does God exist?” Two possible single realities exist: yes or no.  

Think about your research project with this in mind; that is, does a single reality exist within your research? If you’re a medical researcher, the answer is probably yes. You’re looking for specific results that ideally have clear yes or no answers. If you’re an anthropologist, there probably isn’t one clear, specific answer to your research question but multiple possible realities, and the study results are interpreted through the researcher’s viewpoint or paradigm.  

Epistemology is the study of knowledge and how we can know reality. It incorporates the extent and ways to gain knowledge and how to validate that knowledge. A frequently used example question in epistemology is “How is it possible to know whether or not God exists?”  

The epistemology of your research project will help determine your approach to your study. For example, if the medical researcher believes there is one singular truth, an objective approach will be taken. On the other hand, if the anthropologist believes in multiple realities viewed through a cultural lens, the research results will be more subjective and understood only in the proper context. This difference divides research studies into those using quantitative and qualitative techniques.  

Methodology is the study of how one investigates the environment and validates the knowledge gained. It attempts to answer the question “how to go about discovering the answer/reality.” Addressing this pillar leads to specific data collection and analysis plans.   

The medical researcher may create a research plan that includes a clinical trial, during which blood tests that measure a specific protein are conducted. These results are then analyzed, with a focus on differences within groups. The anthropologist, on the other hand, may conduct observations, examine artifacts, or set up interviews to determine certain aspects of reality within the context of a group’s culture. In this situation, yes or no answers are not sought but a truth is discovered.  

What is the purpose of research paradigms ?  

Put all the information about the three pillars of a research paradigm together, and you can see the purpose of research paradigms . Research paradigms establish the structure and foundation for a research project.   

Once the research paradigm has been determined, an appropriate research plan can be created. The philosophical basis of the study guides what knowledge is sought, how that knowledge can be discovered, and how to form the collected information or data into the knowledge being sought. The research paradigm clearly outlines the path to investigate your topic. This brings clarity to your study and improves the quality of your methods and analysis.  

In addition, it is important for researchers to understand how their own beliefs, assumptions, and biases can affect the research process. The study’s data collection, analysis, and interpretation will be impacted by the worldview of the researcher. Knowing the underlying research paradigm and how it frames the study allows researchers to better understand the effect of their perspective on the study results.   

Types of research paradigms  

As mentioned previously, there are two basic types of research paradigms , from which other frequently used paradigms are derived. This section will briefly describe these two major research paradigms .   

Positivist paradigm – Proponents of a positivist paradigm believe that there is a single reality that can be measured and understood. Therefore, these researchers are likely to utilize quantitative methods in their studies. The research process for positivist paradigm studies tend to propose an empirical hypothesis, which is then supported or refuted through the data collection and analysis. Positivists approach research in an objective manner and statistically investigate the existence of quantitative relationships between variables instead of looking for the qualitative reason behind those relationships. Researchers who subscribe to this paradigm also believe that the results of one study can be generalized to similar situations. Positivist paradigms are most frequently used by physical scientists.  

Interpretivism paradigm – Interpretivists believe in the existence of multiple realities rather than a single reality. This is the research paradigm used by the majority of qualitative studies conducted in the social sciences. Interpretivism holds that because human behavior is so complex, it cannot be studied by probabilistic models, such as those used under positivist paradigms . Knowledge can only be created by interpreting the meanings that people put on behaviors and events. Therefore, studies employing this framework are necessarily subjective and are greatly affected by the researcher’s personal viewpoint. Interpretivist paradigm research is conducted within the reality of those being studied, not in a contrived environment such as a laboratory. Because of the nature of interpretivist studies, their results are only valid under the particular circumstances of the study and are usually not generalizable.   

Research paradigm examples    

Positivist and interpretivist research paradigms , sometimes referred to as quantitative and qualitative paradigms, are the two major approaches to research. However, many other variations of these have been used. Following are brief descriptions of some of the more popular of these research paradigm variations.  

Pragmatism paradigm – Pragmatists believe that reality is continually changing amid the flow of constantly changing situations. Therefore, rather than use a single research paradigm , they employ the framework that is most applicable to the research question they are examining. Both qualitative and quantitative techniques are often used as positivist and interpretivist approaches are combined. Pragmatists believe that the best research method is the one that will most effectively address the research question.  

Constructivist paradigm – Like interpretivists, constructivists believe that there are numerous realities, not a single reality. The constructivist paradigm holds that people construct their own understanding of the world through experiencing and reflecting on those experiences. Constructivist research seeks to understand the meanings that people attach to those experiences. Therefore, qualitative techniques, such as interviews and case studies, are frequently used. Constructivists are seeking the “why” of events. Constructivism is also a popular theory of learning that focuses on how children and other learners create knowledge from their experiences and learn better through experimentation than through direct instruction.  

Post-positivism paradigm – Post-positivists veer away from the concept of reality as being an absolute certainty and view it instead in a more probabilistic manner, thus taking a more subjective viewpoint. They believe that research outcomes can never be totally objective and a researcher’s worldview and biases can never be completely removed from the research results.  

Transformative paradigm – Proponents of transformative research reject both positivism and interpretivism, believing that these frameworks do not accurately represent the experiences of marginalized communities. Transformative researchers generally use both qualitative and quantitative techniques to better understand the disparities in community relationships, support social justice, and ultimately ensure transformative change.    

Combining research paradigms    

While most research is based on either a positivist (quantitative) or interpretivist (qualitative) foundations, some studies combine both. For example, quantitative and qualitative techniques are frequently used together in psychology studies. These types of studies are referred to as mixed-method research. Some research paradigms are themselves combinations of other paradigms and frequently employ all the associated research methods. Post-positivism combines the paradigms of positivism and interpretivism.  

5 steps to a paradigm shift  

Research studies aren’t the only things that can be considered to have paradigms. Researchers themselves bring a specific worldview to their work and produce higher quality work when they are aware of the effect their perspective has on their results. Understanding all the aspects of a personal paradigm, including beliefs, habits, and behaviors, can make it possible for that paradigm to be changed. Here are suggested steps to successfully shift your personal paradigm and increase the quality of your research 2 .  

• Identify the paradigm element you want to change – what part of your worldview do you want to change? What habitual or hidden behavior may be adversely affecting your research or your life? 
• Write down your goals – setting specific desired outcomes and putting them down on paper sets them in your subconscious.   
• Adjust your mindset – intentionally influencing your thoughts to support your goals can motivate you to create the change you want. Some suggested activities to help with this include journaling, reading motivational books, and spending time with like-minded people.  
• Do uncomfortable things – you need to get out of your comfort zone to effect real change. This will get your subconscious out of its usual habits and move you toward your goal.  
• Practice being who you want to be – the change you want will become solidified and part of your new paradigm once you break out of your old habit and keep repeating the new behavior so as to cement it in your subconscious.  

References:  

• Merriam-Webster Dictionary. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/paradigm [Accessed March 10, 2023]  
• What is research paradigm – explanation and examples. Peachy Essay. https://peachyessay.com/blogs/what-is-research-paradigm/ [Accessed March 10, 2023]  

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Research Paper Appendix: Format and Examples

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Navigating the Landscape of Research Paradigms: An Overview and Critique

2023, Navigating the Landscape of Research Paradigms: An Overview and Critique

The aim of this study is to investigate the different research paradigms, including conventional and alternative paradigms, and to critically examine their underlying assumptions and implications for research design, data collection, and analysis. The methodology involves a critical examination of different research paradigms and their underlying belief structure. The main findings of this study indicate that different research paradigms have different assumptions about the nature of reality, the role of the researcher, and the goals of the research. These assumptions have implications at the fundamental level. This review article contributes to the existing literature by providing a comprehensive overview of research paradigms and their implications for research design, data collection, and analysis, practically. The study also emphasizes the importance of choosing the most appropriate research paradigm that aligns with the research questions and goals, leading to more accurate and relevant findings that contribute to the advancement of knowledge in the scholarly fields.

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This is a method article focused on the different choices at the paradigmatic or philosophical level which actually leads to researcher's choice of research design and methods at subsequent stages. Research methodology is the section that distinguishes a research paper from a usual narrative or newspaper like essay. Researchers are often prone to jumping into particular methods of data collection instruments, data collection methods, and data analysis methods (questionnaire design, Likert scale, factor analysis etc.). Sometimes they are confused by their evaluators who themselves might not be aware of the implications of different top level choices of the research like research philosophy and paradigms. While it is a convention that researcher has to detail the paradigmatic position the research, many scholars put it in this way: 'management' or 'business' research is often a mixture of these philosophies and approaches. All the positions are appropriate or depending on what the research objectives are. Researchers do not have to make an extreme choice for the sake of making. Rather we need to see what the nature of the problem is and what philosophy would be best to detail the inquiry. And often, it is a mixed approach and multiple methods.

Muhammad Athar H. Shah

"As the plethora of literature on research paradigms is increasingly confounding for fresh researchers, the current paper attempts to discuss some of the fundamental issues in social sciences research with the aim to offer a lucid narrative for less experienced researchers in the field. The paper critically reviews literature on research paradigms, delineates the differences between Interpretive, Positivist and Critical paradigms, and explains their ontological and epistemological stances. It also precisely defines and examines different research methodologies, approaches and methods. It underscores that we should be careful in the choice our research paradigm and design our studies with a clear link between the paradigmatic nature and theoretical framework(s) of research. While encouraging a flexible approach in the choice of research methods or mixing of methods, it argues that ontological and epistemological beliefs do not prevent a qualitative researcher from utilizing data collection methods typically used in quantitative research approach. Hence choice of any research method(s) should not be interpreted as an indicator of an ontological or epistemological position."

Jeremy Woodhill

Prince Kumar

In this article the authors discuss issues faced by early career researchers, including the dichotomy, which many research textbooks and journal articles create and perpetuate between qualitative and quantitative research methodology despite considerable literature to support the use of mixed methods. The authors review current research literature and discuss some of the language, which can prove confusing to the early career researcher and problematic for postgraduate supervisors and teachers of research. The authors argue that discussions of research methods in research texts and university courses should include mixed methods and should address the perceived dichotomy between qualitative and quantitative research methodology.

“Ye Shall Know Them by Their Fruits”

Jason Garcia Portilla, Ph.D.

This chapter discusses the research paradigms underpinning this study––i.e. dialectical pluralism (DP) (mixed methods research) and a complex thinking perspective. The chapter also explains the researcher’s scientific and personal paradigm biases and details some strategies utilised for objective data treatment.

IOSR Journals

This paper makes a conceptual clarification of some research elements-paradigm, methodology, design and method which have proved confusing to early career researchers, postgraduate supervisors and authors. This confusion has often been created and perpetuated by many research textbooks and journals over the years. By using a literature review and author's experience, this paper provides an exposition of the distinction and relationship between these concepts with a view to better the understanding and application of the concepts, for early career researchers, especially Master's and PhD students and postgraduate supervisors.

saeed ahmed

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Research Paradigms: Explanation and Examples

• 4-minute read
• 1st March 2022

Are you planning a research project? If so, you’ll need a research paradigm. But what exactly is a research paradigm, and why is it important? This blog post will cover the following:

●  The definition of a research paradigm

●  Why research paradigms are important

●  Common examples of research paradigms

●  Merging research paradigms

●  Expert editing and proofreading

Read on to find out more or learn about research paradigms in the video below!

The Definition of a Research Paradigm

A research paradigm is a philosophical framework that your research is based on. It offers a pattern of beliefs and understandings from which the theories and practices of your research project operate.

A research paradigm consists of ontology, epistemology, and research methodology .

●  Ontology answers the question: “What is reality?” That is, does a single reality exist within your research? An example of an ontological question would be: “Does God exist?” There are two possible realities (or ontologies) in response to this question: “Yes, God exists,” or “No, God does not exist.”

●  Epistemology is the study of knowledge. It answers the question: “How is it possible to know reality?” Epistemology incorporates the validity, parameters, and methods of acquiring knowledge. An example of an epistemological question would be: “How is it possible to know whether God exists or not?”

●  Research Methodology answers the question: “How do we go about discovering the answer or reality?” This includes the process of data collection and analysis. Research methodology should outline how you conduct your research and demonstrate that the findings are valid.

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Together, ontology and epistemology comprise research philosophy.

Research philosophy combined with research methodology comprises a research paradigm.

Why Are Research Paradigms Important?

Research paradigms are important because they form the philosophical basis of a research project. Research paradigms influence how different schools of learning (such as the sciences versus the humanities) undertake their research. Once a research philosophy has been determined, an appropriate methodology can be chosen.

Furthermore, a knowledge of the philosophical foundation of your research will increase its quality and improve your performance in any analysis you may have to undergo!

Common Examples of Research Paradigms

1. Positivism

Positivists believe that there’s a single reality that’s possible to measure and understand. Because of this, they’re most likely to use quantitative methods in their research. Typically, positivists propose a hypothesis that can be proved or disproved using statistical data analysis. Positivism tends to investigate the existence of a relationship between two variables rather than the reason behind it.

2. Constructivism

Constructivists believe that there’s no single reality or truth, but rather multiple realities. They devote themselves to understanding and interpreting the meaning attached to an action. For this reason, constructivists tend to use qualitative research methods, such as interviews or case studies, which focus on providing different perspectives. Constructivism aims to provide the answer to “why.” For example, asking “Why do 25% of the employees of an organization regularly arrive late to work?” rather than merely establishing the relationship between two variables (e.g., time of arrival at work and availability of nearby parking).

3. Pragmatists

Pragmatists believe that reality is continually interpreted and renegotiated against the backdrop of new and unpredictable situations. Because of this, the philosophy they apply in research depends on the research question itself. Pragmatists often combine positivist and constructivist principles in the same research project, using both qualitative and quantitative methods to investigate different components of a research problem. They believe that the optimal research methods are those that most successfully answer the research question.

Merging Research Paradigms

While most social science research operates from either a positivist (experimental) or constructivist paradigm, it’s possible to combine both, as the field of psychology often does. Quantitative and qualitative methodology are frequently used together in psychology, illustrating the subject’s footing in multiple research paradigms (positivist and constructivist).

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If you’re writing a research proposal or paper , you’ll want to ensure that your writing is error-free, fluent, and precise. Although re-reading your own work is valuable, it can be very helpful to get another opinion on your writing. We offer a free trial of proofreading and editing services when you submit your first document. Click here to find out more!

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Research, Digital, UX and a PhD.

The research paradigm – methodology, epistemology and ontology – explained in simple language

Published July 15, 2015 by Salma Patel

I have put together this post to explain what a research paradigm is, which includes ontology, epistemology, theoretical framework and methodology, and why it is important for your research or PhD. It took me a while to understand this properly, and below is a summary of my understanding of the topic, which I hope will help you. I suggest you go easy on yourself (I was pulling my hair out on the second day). I would also love to be corrected if anything below is wrong (though as you are aware, there are so many disagreements amongst philosophers and epistemologists – there is no one right answer!). So, let’s get started …

[This post is also available to read in Arabic here .]

What is a research paradigm?

According to Guba (1990), research paradigms can be characterised through their:A research paradigm is “the set of common beliefs and agreements shared between scientists about how problems should be understood and addressed” (Kuhn, 1962)

• ontology  – What is reality?
• epistemology  – How do you know something?
• methodology  – How do you go about finding it out?

The diagram below explains the above terms and the relationship between them:

If the above still doesn’t make things clear, don’t worry. I would now recommend you watch this video which explains the above in very simple terms, and explains the two major paradigms: positivism and constructivism.

Why is it important?

Your ontology and epistemology create a holistic view of how knowledge is viewed and how we can see ourselves in relation to this knowledge, and the methodological strategies we use to un/discover it. Awareness of philosophical assumptions will increase quality of research and can contribute to the creativity of the researcher. Furthermore, you will be asked about it in your viva and are expected to narrate it when you write up your research findings.

Which research paradigm does my research belong to?

In really simple terms, the three most common paradigms are explained below (and are shown in this epistemology diagram too, taken from here ):

• Positivists believe that there is a single reality, which can be measured and known, and therefore they are more likely to use quantitative methods to measure and this reality.
• Constructivists believe that there is no single reality or truth, and therefore reality needs to be interpreted, and therefore they are more likely to use qualitative methods to get those multiple realities.
• Pragmatists believe that reality is constantly renegotiated, debated, interpreted, and therefore the best method to use is the one that solves the problem

The table below (which I created) gives a more detailed overview of each paradigm (and contains subjectivism and critical too), and your own research paradigm could very well sit in between one of the paradigms. You could use a top down or a bottom up approach (Rebecca explains here ) to decide where your research sits. In a bottom up approach, you decide on your research question, then you decide which methods, methodology, theoretical perspective you will approach your research from. In reality, I believe its probably neither strictly a top down or bottom up approach, you probably go back and forth till you find the right fit. I believe each research project would have a different research paradigm and hence a different theoretical perspective.

Table adapted from various sources, including Crotty (1998). Crotty left ontology out of his framework, and also didn’t include Pragmatism and Critical. But the assumptions underlying every piece of research are both ontological and epistemological.

Where does most social science research sit?

“1. Experimental (Positivist), with a more realist ontology (i.e. reality is out there), with an empiricist epistemology (i.e. and I’ll gather sense data to find it);

2. Postmodernist constructivism, with a less realist ontology (i.e. reality is just a load of competing claims), and a constructivist epistemology (i.e. and I’ll analyse those competing accounts to explore it)

Applied, then to social psychology, it is important to understand the tension, throughout its history, between:

1. A more traditional experimental (quantitative) approach, which sees social reality as a set of facts to be known for all time by measuring people in the laboratory;

2. A more critical, discursive (qualitative) approach, which sees social reality as mutually constructed between people in the real world.”

However, I must add that pragmatism (and hence mixed methods research) is also being increasingly used in social sciences.

What impact will my chosen paradigm have on my research?

It will have a huge impact. Let me give you an example of an interview based research that is constructivist:

“So as GP trainers, constructivism means that to understand our trainees and their learning, beliefs or behaviours we have to be aware of their experience and culture (the historical and cultural contexts) and recognise that they don’t just potentially see the world differently to us, but experience it differently too.” Source.

Useful reading and references

Texts I found useful:

Crotty, M., 1998. Foundations of social research: Meaning and Perspective in the Research Process. p.256.

Easterby-Smith, M., Thorpe, R. and Jackson, P.R., 2012. Management Research . [online] SAGE Publications. Available at: <https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Management_Research.html?id=ahbhMb-R7MQC&pgis=1> [Accessed 14 Jul. 2015].

Scotland, J., 2012. Exploring the philosophical underpinnings of research: Relating ontology and epistemology to the methodology and methods of the scientific, interpretive, and critical research paradigms. English Language Teaching , 5(9), pp.9–16.

Blog posts that were useful:

http://doctoralstudy.blogspot.co.uk/2009/05/being-clear-about-methodology-ontology.html?m=1

http://eddiechauncy.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/what-are-ontology-and-epistemology_12.html

https://www.academia.edu/12235888/Developing_an_Appreciative_Understanding_of_Epistemologies_in_Educational_Research_One_Bloggers_Journey 

Useful video:

Assumptions of researchers:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gONyWHpSSWc

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Published in Research Research Research Methods

• epistemology
• research methods
• research paradigm

147 Comments

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Jazakamullah Khair

Thank so much. I have been struggling with the research terminology. This is now so clear. Help me now understand the difference between a conceptual framework and theoretical framework.

Very very useful article, thank you. Is this the correct way to cite in APA? Patel, S. (2015). The research paradigm – methodology, epistemology and ontology – explained in simple language. Retrieved from https://salmapatel.co.uk/academia/the-research-paradigm-methodology-epistemology-and-ontology-explained-in-simple-language/

Thanks Vana, I’m pleased to hear it was useful. I think that looks fine.

Thanks a million brother Salma Patel. A scholastic, helpful post that made me understand the subject crystal clear. God bless you.

You’re very welcome Anthony, I’m glad it was helpful!

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Oh my gosh, this is amazing. And so, so helpful. Thank you for making it so clear. That table alone is worth a million bucks. THANK YOU! You’re amazing.

Thank you so much for the knowledge you shared for us who are working on research as I was confused about these long words but the explanation provided for each word and their meaning, enlightening myself in research terminology for words like epistemology, ontology, and many more. Thanks again and God bless .

Thanks Salma This is very helpful, clearly laid out information. it helped with my assignment.

Hi Lauren, Thank you for your comment. I am very pleased to hear it was useful for your assignment. Best wishes, Salma

What an excellent explanation you have given brother.. It is really useful for my thesis works. Decided to keep in touch with your site… Thanks

in research conducts , how important is it to consider the relationships between research paradigms, approaches, and methods? need an clarification

Many thanks Salma. I’ve just begun my journey in doctorate research and the biggest learning curve so far is simply understanding academic language. Your explanation has made it all that much simpler. Brilliant – thank you!!

Thanks Rowley, I’m pleased to hear it was useful. Best wishes, Salma

I re-read this information, and now I am now certain that I am locating my research in the correct paradigm of Pragmatism. So I am also using genealogy, which is part critical. Therefore, mixed methods.

Dear Salma, I found it very useful and learn lots out of it. Thank you for sharing.

I have been pulling my hair out! Thank you for your explanation at least I can attempt my assignment

very informative. Thank you Salma. I have been really pulling my hair out. Now I can attempt my assignment.

Thank you so much for your sharing such an informative information, it was very helpful for me.

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I Love charts. This is so ridiculously helpful of you. Very generous.

Brilliant! Felt like I was a little lost until I came across your page. Thanks for your hard work!

Alhamdulillah. A very useful review. Shared. JazakAllah Khair Kathira.

Absolutely useful guidelines as I embark on my doctoral journey. I am busy with my research proposal and your post has come in handy and is helping me clarify my research methodology. Many thanks Salma.

thanks very much this has being of good help.

mashalla brelient assumption JZ KL

this is amazing!!!! I actually understand it!! this should be in text books, books and everything ! amazing amazing amazing !!!

What a great article and video! It was extremely helpful! I was reading the whole day a lot of shitty articles about the philosophy of research and couldn’t interpret it according to my research. Holistic and very useful materials. Thanks a lot!

Thank you so much.. very useful for research.

Very useful, BIG thank you from UK.

Just wanna say thanks for the explicit / definitive explanation!! An exampler of a best teacher!

This is very helpful, thanks

I must confess that this post helped to lift the burden of understanding this process few hours to the before submission of my Mphil-PhD transfer report. This is absolutely resourceful Patel. Presented in such a manner that a layman can understand this process. Thanks once again as you have just saved a brother.

Thanks for this article and the youtube video. Breaking the concepts down as you have done has really helped grasp these concepts as I commence my PhD studies. Great job!

Thanks Patel.The work is superb.It has assisted me great deal.May be if you have PDF versions of Ontology, Epistemology and Methodology, you can assist me to use in my Masters degree.

Great site to make sense of big words in simple terms. Thank you for the insight and simplicity of approach.

Thank you everyone for your lovely comments. I am truly pleased to hear this article has been useful to so many of you! Wishing you all the best with your research endeavors.

Thanks Salma, this was helpful, easy to understand and interesting above all. The presentation simplifies everything about research. Thanks so much

I really appreciate your great effort for helping students who have been facing challenge with research.

You have lucidly and successfully explain the technical terms to the novice

Can you use the ontology and epistemology at the same time in the dissertation? Example say ontology of power is socially constructed and my epistemology to explain power is what?

You would normally make reference to both Ontology and Epistemology in the thesis. I am not sure if the example you have given is correct though.

Best wishes, Salma

Ontology is let say What is AIDS and epistemology is finding how you find AIDS? So ontology is a topic and epistemology finding how you arrive with the knowledge. Ontology can be positivist or non-positivist, subjective and objective.

Grt work man. Learnt a lot from ur simple explanations Thanks n keep up

Thanks for information.. it’s really good and very helpful for me to complete my assignment and also for my exams.

This has been very helpful. thanks a million

Very useful, You made this so simple. Well done and thanks for relieving me of some of the stress.

Hi . if anyone can guide. Can i only use the quantitative research approach while following the pragmatism paradigm

Yes Tariq, I don’t see why not. Salma

Thank you so much Salma. Brilliant explanation. From South Africa / Eritrea.

Thanks very much for this – after reading many text books and articles and still feeling lost, this was super helpful!! One thing that i’m still not sure on though is where it is best to include your epistemological stance in the dissertation? Is it in the Analysis part of your methods? Or is it in Design as it is supposed to influence your whole study? I haven’t ever seen anyone reporting it in a journal article before so don’t have any insight into this, yet we are expected to include it ‘somewhere’. Any recommendations or thoughts would be much appreciated!

Hi Natalie, I have usually seen it reported in the methodology chapter – that is also where I placed mine. I hope that helps. Best wishes, Salma

This is amazing, thank you so much – I’ve been trying to get my head around this for months and you’ve done such a great job of explaining it in ways that are easily understood. Why aren’t you my lecturer haha :'(

Your information is very useful. I have really enjoyed reading it. I have little understanding of ontoloy and epistemology now

Hello,thank you so much saima,i am very happy that i found it the meaning of research paradigm.i have many learn about methodology and also thank you that you are sharing your knowledge with us. God bless you saima patel!!!!

Wow, thank you so much for making this clear. It will certainly help with my assignment.

Thank you for sharing, this has been so helpful for my understanding of the different paradigms.

Thank you for helping us to know critical things in precise ;concise; and simple manner. honestly speaking it is crucial and insightful in doing of my assignment and i owed to acknowledges you ideas dully. How ever, I would like forward one question for you.Is there an instance in which two or more research paradigm may likely included in single research?

Hi, Thank you so much for this. However. I would like to ask something: is it possible to conduct a phenomenological research with a deductive analysis? Thank you very much.

Thank you so much. Your comments really helped with my assignment in understanding ontology & epistemology

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Thank you so much for creating this post Salma! I struggled with these concepts during undergrad, now that I’m completing my masters I had to get to grips with them, this post helped a lot and so did your recommendations for further reading 🙂

Thank you so much brother! Your article has helped me a lot in my thesis review.

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This was good and helpful,,,i was about to begin pulling my hair out. Thank you

I came to this post seeking information to address an article reviewer’s request to restructure a methodology section that directly contrasted with the second reviewers’ request for the same article. this is not the first time this has happened. I wish all reviewers would read your article it is useful and clear. I certainly will keep it in mind for my own future reviews. Thanks.

Hi, thanks for the information. I have a question that maybe you or someone can help me with. If symbolic interactionism is influenced by pragmatism, how did it end up being a interpretist theoretical perspective? I get that pragmatism states to use the best methods possible, but is there any more information on this? Many thanks in advance

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Many thanks Salma, that ‘s really helps clearing up lots of confusions and same me much more time.

Truly appreciate this information, it could not have been any clearer,

This is brilliant. I am currently writing my Methods chapter and was struggling to understand a lot of the philosophical underpinnings piece. What you have provided here is very clear and comprehensive. Thank you for sharing.

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Salma, I have shared this with many researchers and students and keep coming back to it. It is really an invaluable post and you have done the academic community a great service in sharing it. Just wanting to say thank you. x

Thanks you Becca, that’s very kind! Best wishes, Salma

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THE CONTRIBUTION. JUST A REQUEST FOR A MORE ELABORATE AND PRECISE DISTINCTION BETWEEN A METHOD AND A METHODOLOGY. THANK YOU

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Thank you for this very useful information. Please anyone, help me to understand that, where is the definition of Paradigm mentioned in the book of Kuhn 1962.

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This was really helpful! I struggle with epistemology and what to actually say about it when writing up how I did a mini study.

I would like to take your permission to translate this post into Arabic with reference to the source.

Hi Zanah, thanks, that would be helpful! Could you drop me a quick line please on me (at) salmapatel.co.uk? Thanks! Salma

I like the whole presentation, made things a little clearer Question: Where do i talk about the theoretical perspective and paradigm when it comes to developing the proposal. Which chapter and section?

I’m pleased to hear you found it useful. It usually goes in the methodology chapter, which is normally found after the literature review chapter. All the best, Salma

Thank you Salma. Now, Can someone use phenomenology as a theory to base the research or it is inadequate. What do you think?

This was awesome! It was simple and easy to understand. Thank you so much! I’m sure I’ll be back with more questions though!

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Good day salma may I ask your help? how would I write a research paradigm about Identification and assessment of learners with learning disabilities? please help. thanks

Thank you, this helped me so much. What all the information my uni tried to give me but I didn’t need to filter through everything I couldn’t understand.

Thank you Salma; this has deepened my understanding.

Thanks Salma, its a wonderful and simple explanation

Thank you so much, this article and video has made my life so much easier, I was really struggling with research paradigms and you have made the subject very clear!

Thank you so much for your effort in explaining all the aspects about research in many forms. Your materials have really clarified all my confusion especially about the terms involved in research. I salute you for your intelligence and simplistic method of explaining research to those who are not well-versed about it. May the force be with you, man!

Thank you so much for the write. I know what to do now

Very useful, understandable. Thank you

Very easy to understand ,useful content Thank you

Thank you! This has been most helpful!

Very simple and clear explanation . Really useful. Thank you for posting this.

This was very helpful I even cited you. Continue the good work Dr Patel. Very informative

Thanks so much for this detailed but simplified explanation. It is of great help.

Thank you. This is the most useful explanation I have ever come across with in Research Paradigms

This is insightful. Thank you for the clear explanations. I have fully understood the terms and now able to apply them. Thank you a million times

This came at a time when I am struggling understanding their meanings and trying to apply them to research philosophical underpinning. Thank you Salma for this simplified explanation. I salute you

Thank you, very clear explanation.

Thank you Dr Salma for the ever green demystification of research paradigm. God Bless You.

I read a book for 5 hours and I didn’t get it. I read your post in 5 mins and I completely understood. Thank you

[…] Patal, S. (2015, July 15). The research paradigm – methodology, epistemology and ontology – explained in simple language. https://salmapatel.co.uk/academia/the-research-paradigm-methodology-epistemology-and-ontology-explain&#8230 ; […]

Salma, thank you so much for this scholarship of knowledge. I am just starting my Research Paradigm journey on what system (s) I will use for my Dissertation Research. I am not sure if it will be Qualitative, Quantitative or both. I’m Just diving in!

Oh my goodness. Sanity at last!! Thank you so much for sharing this comprehensive and easy to understand post. Your videos are also wonderful!

Thank you so much. This has been really helpful and – I think – the information has finally gone in!!

This is INCREDIBLY complex and yet tremendously easy to understand. Thank you for sharing. It helped me with my placement research. 🙂

Hi Salma Found this very helpful and it was referred to in a recent text on Community and Human Services. However my supervisor is not keen on me referring to a blog in my PhD. Just wondering if you have submitted this to peer reviewed journal. I am particularly interested in the sections on constructionism and pragmatism. I am using mixed methods with qualitative data based on phenomenological interpretation with quant data which I have got from an organisation. Look forward to your reply! Mary

Very Useful Content

I would like to suggest Recep Senturk Maratib Alwujud for an Islamic Ontology, Epistemology, and Methodology guide.

OMG Thank you so much, this is so helpful and the best explanation I have seen yet. I am currently studying Qualitative research at Uni for my Master of Nursing and this has helped me a lot.

Thanks Jackie

Thank you so much. This article and table has made life much easier. Much appreciated.

Brilliant, thank you so much. An easy to read guide and explanation. I can actually now start writing my methodology section

It is simply Super. If willing, convert it into well structured journal article. that will increase its reach beyond imagination like crotty

Thanks for the clear info, really helpful article!

I am in the second of three research courses, all building up to my doctoral thesis proposal. This is very helpful!

Thank you! this made everything much easier to understand. Very clear

Thank you very much For information on research paradigms Dr. Salma Patel they are very difficult to grasp, this will brighten my understanding of research report together with referencing ??

I cant thank you enough for this! I was on the verge of giving up on my Phd until I read this! Wonderfully written and made it so easy to understand

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How Research Paradigms Improve the Research Process?

Published by Alvin Nicolas at June 13th, 2024 , Revised On July 9, 2024

If you’re planning to write a research paper on a particular topic, then you should set specific criteria. These criteria will help you to successfully structure the approach that will be used in the methodology of your work. To write an outstanding research paper and set efficient criteria, you should understand the concept of the research paradigm.

In this blog, you will get to know about research paradigms, different types of research paradigms, and the importance of those paradigms.

What is the Research Paradigm?

Research paradigms refer to those beliefs and ideologies that efficiently help you to properly structure your research. These paradigms assist the researchers so that they can quickly understand how to implement different theories and practices for their research work.

Research Paradigm Definition

In simple words, a research paradigm is a method, model or pattern for conducting research. It is a set of ideas, beliefs, and understandings by using which theories and techniques are implemented for the research process.

Research paradigms are used in the research projects for the creation of research methods and their execution for the leal and appropriate research.

Research Paradigm Example

However, if you want to research the effects of parental literacy rate on the academic research of their children, then the result would not be one-sided. You will have to examine the agenda from different perspectives, such as socio-economical and cultural.

What are the Pillars and Different Types of Paradigms in Research?

Before discussing the different types of paradigms in research, you should also know about the three pillars of research paradigms.

3 Pillars of Research Paradigms

4 Types of Paradigms in Research

Here are the different types of paradigms in research:

• Positivist Research Paradigm

According to the positivist research paradigm, there is only one objective reality. People can accurately know about this reality and describe and explain it. Activists significantly obtain knowledge of their surroundings by relying on their observations through their senses.

When there is just one single reality, researchers can efficiently compare it with claims and determine its certainty. Positivists use qualitative research methodology in their research. This research paradigm is mostly used for research in physical sciences and natural sciences because large sample sizes are used in it.

• Interpretivist Research Paradigm

According to the interpretivists, people experience and understand reality in different ways in our society. In short, there could be only one reality, but everyone interprets it according to their own point of view.

People also tend to believe that the theories and worldviews of the researchers heavily influence research all around the world. Interpretivists use qualitative research methodology. This includes interviews, focus groups, document collection, etc.

• Critical Theory Research Paradigm

According to the critical theory paradigm, social science can never be one hundred percent objective. This paradigm is mainly focused on achieving societal change through thorough scientific investigation.

The objective of critical theorists is to ask questions about knowledge and procedure to know how power is being used in investigating. They aim to create an egiilitarian society for all the individuals with their freedom. Critical theorists use both qualitative and quantitative methodologies.

Constructivist Research Paradigm

In this paradigm, constructivists believe that reality is the construct of our minds. It is better to assume that reality is subjective. According to constructivists, knowledge comes from individual experiences and the reflections of those experiences.

Constructivists only use qualitative research methodology. There is only a single methodology to generate knowledge according to this paradigm. The constructivists mainly focus on the subjective experiences of the participants as well as of their own.

Difference Between Research Philosophy & Research Paradigm

Importance of Paradigms in Research

The research paradigms significantly help to establish the foundation of research and its methodologies. They thoroughly examine and investigate how information is researched and understood. They specifically encompass the objectives, motives and predicted results of the research.

When research paradigms are perfectly implemented, then the researchers can have a clear path to research their desired topics. They ensure high quality and proficiency in work. Some of the important terms related to research paradigms are discussed below:

What is Axiology?

Axiology refers to the branch of philosophy that deals with value judgements. It deals with the understanding of researchers about their values and role in the research process . Axiology is subdivided into ethics and aesthetics. Axiology compels the researcher to assume these questions:

• Which ethical principles should be used in the research?
• What should be done to respect the rights of each and every participant?

Critical Realism in Research

Critical realism refers to the branch of philosophy that differentiates between the real world and the observable world. The real world cannot be truly observed. It exists independently of the viewpoints of humans. The world is constructed through the perspective of humans and their experiences. Critical realism helps to enhance the research questions by accomplishing the complexity and context of social phenomena.

Feminist Paradigm in Research

This paradigm deals with and is specifically concerned with the oppression and exclusion of women in society. It also throws light on the struggles and insights of the oppressed and disempowered groups of society.

This paradigm leads to the construction of different ways to alleviate and empower those oppressed and disempowered groups. It also focuses on improving social policies for the betterment of society.

Functionalist Paradigm in Research

According to the functionalist paradigm, anything that exists in the society plays an important role to create social stability. Any person or institution that will not play its part will simply not survive.

Functionalism efficiently interprets how every part of the society contributes to the stability of the whole society. If anything becomes absent from it, whether any individual or an institution will significantly influence the performance of the community as a whole.

Research Paradigms for Mixed-Methods

Mixed-methods research has gained immense popularity in the field of social research during the past 20-25 years. This research is motivated by practical considerations rather than philosophical ones. It mainly focuses on what is achievable, what is useful, and what is most likely to get funded.

Quantitative research can provide researchers with a bigger picture by using numeric data and help them understand what has happened. Qualitative research deals with a deep understanding of the stories and experiences of different individuals. When these methods are combined, the best results can be obtained.

Difference Between Research Paradigm & Research Design

Research Paradigm Examples

Here are a few examples of research paradigms to thoroughly understand their concept:

Example 1: Pragmatism

Imagine an organisation is striving to reduce Type 2 diabetes in a low-income neighbourhood. They use a pragmatic approach to efficiently reduce Type 2 diabetes in the specific community. 

• They will use the mixed-methods research (both quantitative and qualitative).
• They will develop necessary interventions by introducing workshops about nutrition and diet.
• They will gather feedback from the participants to improve their approach. 

Example 2: Positivism

Imagine a pharmaceutical company that wants to develop a specific medicine to treat hypertension. They will use a positivist approach to go through this process. 

• They will formulate the necessary hypothesis focusing on the effectiveness of the new medicine compared to the old one.
• They will use a gold-standard positivist method for medical research.
• A quantitative data collection method will be used to collect blood pressure readings.
• A statistical analysis will be done to compare treatment and blood groups.
• They will analyse the results to study whether the new medicine is better than the old or not. 

Frequently Asked Questions

A research paradigm is a method, model, or pattern used to conduct research. It is a set of ideas, beliefs, and understandings using which theories and techniques are implemented for the research process.

What are Different Paradigms in Research?

Different types of research paradigms are given below:

What is a Positivist Research Paradigm?

You may also like.

This article is a step-by-step guide to how to write statement of a problem in research. The research problem will be half-solved by defining it correctly.

Here we explore what is research problem in dissertation with research problem examples to help you understand how and when to write a research problem.

Find how to write research questions with the mentioned steps required for a perfect research question. Choose an interesting topic and begin your research.

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Thomas Kuhn

Thomas Samuel Kuhn (1922–1996) is one of the most influential philosophers of science of the twentieth century, perhaps the most influential. His 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is one of the most cited academic books of all time. Kuhn’s contribution to the philosophy of science marked not only a break with several key positivist doctrines, but also inaugurated a new style of philosophy of science that brought it closer to the history of science. His account of the development of science held that science enjoys periods of stable growth punctuated by revisionary revolutions. To this thesis, Kuhn added the controversial ‘incommensurability thesis’, that theories from differing periods suffer from certain deep kinds of failure of comparability.

1. Life and Career

2. the development of science, 3. the concept of a paradigm, 4.1 methodological incommensurability, 4.2 perception, observational incommensurability, and world-change, 4.3 kuhn’s early semantic incommensurability thesis, 4.4 kuhn’s later semantic incommensurability thesis, 5. history of science, 6.1 scientific change, 6.2 incommensurability, 6.3 kuhn and social science, 6.4 recent developments, 6.5 assessment, other internet resources, related entries.

Thomas Kuhn’s academic life started in physics. He then switched to history of science, and as his career developed he moved over to philosophy of science, although retaining a strong interest in the history of physics. In 1943, he graduated from Harvard summa cum laude . Thereafter he spent the remainder of the war years in research related to radar at Harvard and then in Europe. He gained his master’s degree in physics in 1946, and his doctorate in 1949, also in physics (concerning an application of quantum mechanics to solid state physics). Kuhn was elected to the prestigious Society of Fellows at Harvard, another of whose members was W. V. Quine. At this time, and until 1956, Kuhn taught a class in science for undergraduates in the humanities, as part of the General Education in Science curriculum, developed by James B. Conant, the President of Harvard. This course was centred around historical case studies, and this was Kuhn’s first opportunity to study historical scientific texts in detail. His initial bewilderment on reading the scientific work of Aristotle was a formative experience, followed as it was by a more or less sudden ability to understand Aristotle properly, undistorted by knowledge of subsequent science.

This led Kuhn to concentrate on history of science and in due course he was appointed to an assistant professorship in general education and the history of science. During this period his work focussed on eighteenth century matter theory and the early history of thermodynamics. Kuhn then turned to the history of astronomy, and in 1957 he published his first book, The Copernican Revolution .

In 1961 Kuhn became a full professor at the University of California at Berkeley, having moved there in 1956 to take up a post in history of science, but in the philosophy department. This enabled him to develop his interest in the philosophy of science. At Berkeley Kuhn’s colleagues included Stanley Cavell, who introduced Kuhn to the works of Wittgenstein, and Paul Feyerabend. With Feyerabend Kuhn discussed a draft of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions which was published in 1962 in the series “International Encyclopedia of Unified Science”, edited by Otto Neurath and Rudolf Carnap. The central idea of this extraordinarily influential—and controversial—book is that the development of science is driven, in normal periods of science, by adherence to what Kuhn called a ‘paradigm’. The functions of a paradigm are to supply puzzles for scientists to solve and to provide the tools for their solution. A crisis in science arises when confidence is lost in the ability of the paradigm to solve particularly worrying puzzles called ‘anomalies’. Crisis is followed by a scientific revolution if the existing paradigm is superseded by a rival. Kuhn claimed that science guided by one paradigm would be ‘incommensurable’ with science developed under a different paradigm, by which is meant that there is no common measure for assessing the different scientific theories. This thesis of incommensurability, developed at the same time by Feyerabend, rules out certain kinds of comparison of the two theories and consequently rejects some traditional views of scientific development, such as the view that later science builds on the knowledge contained within earlier theories, or the view that later theories are closer approximations to the truth than earlier theories. Most of Kuhn’s subsequent work in philosophy was spent in articulating and developing the ideas in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , although some of these, such as the thesis of incommensurability, underwent transformation in the process.

According to Kuhn himself (2000, 307), The Structure of Scientific Revolutions first aroused interest among social scientists, although it did in due course create the interest among philosophers that Kuhn had intended (and also before long among a much wider academic and general audience). While acknowledging the importance of Kuhn’s ideas, the philosophical reception was nonetheless hostile. For example, Dudley Shapere’s review (1964) emphasized the relativist implications of Kuhn’s ideas, and this set the context for much subsequent philosophical discussion. Since the following of rules (of logic, of scientific method, etc.) was regarded as the sine qua non of rationality, Kuhn’s claim that scientists do not employ rules in reaching their decisions appeared tantamount to the claim that science is irrational. This was highlighted by his rejection of the distinction between discovery and justification (denying that we can distinguish between the psychological process of thinking up an idea and the logical process of justifying its claim to truth) and his emphasis on incommensurability (the claim that certain kinds of comparison between theories are impossible). The negative response among philosophers was exacerbated by an important naturalistic tendency in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions that was then unfamiliar. A particularly significant instance of this was Kuhn’s insistence on the importance of the history of science for philosophy of science. The opening sentence of the book reads: “History, if viewed as a repository for more than anecdote or chronology, could produce a decisive transformation in the image of science by which we are now possessed” (1962/1970, 1). Also significant and unfamiliar was Kuhn’s appeal to psychological literature and examples (such as linking theory-change with the changing appearance of a Gestalt image).

In 1964 Kuhn left Berkeley to take up the position of M. Taylor Pyne Professor of Philosophy and History of Science at Princeton University. In the following year an important event took place which helped promote Kuhn’s profile further among philosophers. An International Colloquium in the Philosophy of Science was held at Bedford College, London. One of the key events of the Colloquium was intended to be a debate between Kuhn and Feyerabend, with Feyerabend promoting the critical rationalism that he shared with Popper. As it was, Feyerabend was ill and unable to attend, and the papers delivered focussed on Kuhn’s work. John Watkins took Feyerabend’s place in a session chaired by Popper. The ensuing discussion, to which Popper and also Margaret Masterman and Stephen Toulmin contributed, compared and contrasted the viewpoints of Kuhn and Popper and thereby helped illuminate the significance of Kuhn’s approach. Papers from these discussants along with contributions from Feyerabend and Lakatos, were published several years later, in Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge , edited by Lakatos and Alan Musgrave (1970) (the fourth volume of proceedings from this Colloquium). In the same year the second edition of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions was published, including an important postscript in which Kuhn clarified his notion of paradigm. This was in part in response to Masterman’s (1970) criticism that Kuhn had used ‘paradigm’ in a wide variety of ways; in addition, Kuhn felt that critics had failed to appreciate the emphasis he placed upon the idea of a paradigm as an exemplar or model of puzzle-solving. Kuhn also, for the first time, explicitly gave his work an anti-realist element by denying the coherence of the idea that theories could be regarded as more or less close to the truth.

A collection of Kuhn’s essays in the philosophy and history of science was published in 1977, with the title The Essential Tension taken from one of Kuhn’s earliest essays in which he emphasizes the importance of tradition in science. The following year saw the publication of his second historical monograph Black-Body Theory and the Quantum Discontinuity , concerning the early history of quantum mechanics. In 1983 he was named Laurence S. Rockefeller Professor of Philosophy at MIT. Kuhn continued throughout the 1980s and 1990s to work on a variety of topics in both history and philosophy of science, including the development of the concept of incommensurability, and at the time of his death in 1996 he was working on a second philosophical monograph dealing with, among other matters, an evolutionary conception of scientific change and concept acquisition in developmental psychology.

In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions Kuhn paints a picture of the development of science quite unlike any that had gone before. Indeed, before Kuhn, there was little by way of a carefully considered, theoretically explained account of scientific change. Instead, there was a conception of how science ought to develop that was a by-product of the prevailing philosophy of science, as well as a popular, heroic view of scientific progress. According to such opinions, science develops by the addition of new truths to the stock of old truths, or the increasing approximation of theories to the truth, and in the odd case, the correction of past errors. Such progress might accelerate in the hands of a particularly great scientist, but progress itself is guaranteed by the scientific method.

In the 1950s, when Kuhn began his historical studies of science, the history of science was a young academic discipline. Even so, it was becoming clear that scientific change was not always as straightforward as the standard, traditional view would have it. Kuhn was the first and most important author to articulate a developed alternative account. Since the standard view dovetailed with the dominant, positivist-influenced philosophy of science, a non-standard view would have important consequences for the philosophy of science. Kuhn had little formal philosophical training but was nonetheless fully conscious of the significance of his innovation for philosophy, and indeed he called his work ‘history for philosophical purposes’ (Kuhn 2000, 276).

According to Kuhn the development of a science is not uniform but has alternating ‘normal’ and ‘revolutionary’ (or ‘extraordinary’) phases. The revolutionary phases are not merely periods of accelerated progress, but differ qualitatively from normal science. Normal science does resemble the standard cumulative picture of scientific progress, on the surface at least. Kuhn describes normal science as ‘puzzle-solving’ (1962/1970a, 35–42). While this term suggests that normal science is not dramatic, its main purpose is to convey the idea that like someone doing a crossword puzzle or a chess problem or a jigsaw, the puzzle-solver expects to have a reasonable chance of solving the puzzle, that his doing so will depend mainly on his own ability, and that the puzzle itself and its methods of solution will have a high degree of familiarity. A puzzle-solver is not entering completely uncharted territory. Because its puzzles and their solutions are familiar and relatively straightforward, normal science can expect to accumulate a growing stock of puzzle-solutions. Revolutionary science, however, is not cumulative in that, according to Kuhn, scientific revolutions involve a revision to existing scientific belief or practice (1962/1970a, 92). Not all the achievements of the preceding period of normal science are preserved in a revolution, and indeed a later period of science may find itself without an explanation for a phenomenon that in an earlier period was held to be successfully explained. This feature of scientific revolutions has become known as ‘Kuhn-loss’ (1962/1970a, 99–100).

If, as in the standard picture, scientific revolutions are like normal science but better, then revolutionary science will at all times be regarded as something positive, to be sought, promoted, and welcomed. Revolutions are to be sought on Popper’s view also, but not because they add to positive knowledge of the truth of theories but because they add to the negative knowledge that the relevant theories are false. Kuhn rejected both the traditional and Popperian views in this regard. He claims that normal science can succeed in making progress only if there is a strong commitment by the relevant scientific community to their shared theoretical beliefs, values, instruments and techniques, and even metaphysics. This constellation of shared commitments Kuhn at one point calls a ‘disciplinary matrix’ (1970a, 182) although elsewhere he often uses the term ‘paradigm’. Because commitment to the disciplinary matrix is a pre-requisite for successful normal science, an inculcation of that commitment is a key element in scientific training and in the formation of the mind-set of a successful scientist. This tension between the desire for innovation and the necessary conservativeness of most scientists was the subject of one of Kuhn’s first essays in the theory of science, “The Essential Tension” (1959). The unusual emphasis on a conservative attitude distinguishes Kuhn not only from the heroic element of the standard picture but also from Popper and his depiction of the scientist forever attempting to refute her most important theories.

This conservative resistance to the attempted refutation of key theories means that revolutions are not sought except under extreme circumstances. Popper’s philosophy requires that a single reproducible, anomalous phenomenon be enough to result in the rejection of a theory (Popper 1959, 86–7). Kuhn’s view is that during normal science scientists neither test nor seek to confirm the guiding theories of their disciplinary matrix. Nor do they regard anomalous results as falsifying those theories. (It is only speculative puzzle-solutions that can be falsified in a Popperian fashion during normal science (1970b, 19).) Rather, anomalies are ignored or explained away if at all possible. It is only the accumulation of particularly troublesome anomalies that poses a serious problem for the existing disciplinary matrix. A particularly troublesome anomaly is one that undermines the practice of normal science. For example, an anomaly might reveal inadequacies in some commonly used piece of equipment, perhaps by casting doubt on the underlying theory. If much of normal science relies upon this piece of equipment, normal science will find it difficult to continue with confidence until this anomaly is addressed. A widespread failure in such confidence Kuhn calls a ‘crisis’ (1962/1970a, 66–76).

The most interesting response to crisis will be the search for a revised disciplinary matrix, a revision that will allow for the elimination of at least the most pressing anomalies and optimally the solution of many outstanding, unsolved puzzles. Such a revision will be a scientific revolution. According to Popper the revolutionary overthrow of a theory is one that is logically required by an anomaly. According to Kuhn however, there are no rules for deciding the significance of a puzzle and for weighing puzzles and their solutions against one another. The decision to opt for a revision of a disciplinary matrix is not one that is rationally compelled; nor is the particular choice of revision rationally compelled. For this reason the revolutionary phase is particularly open to competition among differing ideas and rational disagreement about their relative merits. Kuhn does briefly mention that extra-scientific factors might help decide the outcome of a scientific revolution—the nationalities and personalities of leading protagonists, for example (1962/1970a, 152–3). This suggestion grew in the hands of some sociologists and historians of science into the thesis that the outcome of a scientific revolution, indeed of any step in the development of science, is always determined by socio-political factors. Kuhn himself repudiated such ideas and his work makes it clear that the factors determining the outcome of a scientific dispute, particularly in modern science, are almost always to be found within science, specifically in connexion with the puzzle-solving power of the competing ideas.

Kuhn states that science does progress, even through revolutions (1962/1970a, 160ff). The phenomenon of Kuhn-loss does, in Kuhn’s view, rule out the traditional cumulative picture of progress. The revolutionary search for a replacement paradigm is driven by the failure of the existing paradigm to solve certain important anomalies. Any replacement paradigm had better solve the majority of those puzzles, or it will not be worth adopting in place of the existing paradigm. At the same time, even if there is some Kuhn-loss, a worthy replacement must also retain much of the problem-solving power of its predecessor (1962/1970a, 169). (Kuhn does clarify the point by asserting that the newer theory must retain pretty well all its predecessor’s power to solve quantitative problems. It may however lose some qualitative, explanatory power [1970b, 20].) Hence we can say that revolutions do bring with them an overall increase in puzzle-solving power, the number and significance of the puzzles and anomalies solved by the revised paradigm exceeding the number and significance of the puzzles-solutions that are no longer available as a result of Kuhn-loss. Kuhn is quick to deny that there is any inference from such increases to improved nearness to the truth ((1962/1970a, 170–1). Indeed he later denies that any sense can be made of the notion of nearness to the truth (1970a, 206).

Rejecting a teleological view of science progressing towards the truth, Kuhn favours an evolutionary view of scientific progress (1962/1970a, 170–3), discussed in detail by Wray (2011) (see also Bird 2000 and Renzi 2009). The evolutionary development of an organism might be seen as its response to a challenge set by its environment. But that does not imply that there is some ideal form of the organism that it is evolving towards. Analogously, science improves by allowing its theories to evolve in response to puzzles and progress is measured by its success in solving those puzzles; it is not measured by its progress towards to an ideal true theory. While evolution does not lead towards ideal organisms, it does lead to greater diversity of kinds of organism. As Wray explains, this is the basis of a Kuhnian account of specialization in science, an account that Kuhn was developing particularly in the latter part of his career. According to this account, the revolutionary new theory that succeeds in replacing another that is subject to crisis, may fail to satisfy all the needs of those working with the earlier theory. One response to this might be for the field to develop two theories, with domains restricted relative to the original theory (one might be the old theory or a version of it). This formation of new specialties will also bring with it new taxonomic structures and so leads to incommensurability.

A mature science, according to Kuhn, experiences alternating phases of normal science and revolutions. In normal science the key theories, instruments, values and metaphysical assumptions that comprise the disciplinary matrix are kept fixed, permitting the cumulative generation of puzzle-solutions, whereas in a scientific revolution the disciplinary matrix undergoes revision, in order to permit the solution of the more serious anomalous puzzles that disturbed the preceding period of normal science.

A particularly important part of Kuhn’s thesis in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions focuses upon one specific component of the disciplinary matrix. This is the consensus on exemplary instances of scientific research. These exemplars of good science are what Kuhn refers to when he uses the term ‘paradigm’ in a narrower sense. He cites Aristotle’s analysis of motion, Ptolemy’s computations of plantery positions, Lavoisier’s application of the balance, and Maxwell’s mathematization of the electromagnetic field as paradigms (1962/1970a, 23). Exemplary instances of science are typically to be found in books and papers, and so Kuhn often also describes great texts as paradigms—Ptolemy’s Almagest , Lavoisier’s Traité élémentaire de chimie , and Newton’s Principia Mathematica and Opticks (1962/1970a, 12). Such texts contain not only the key theories and laws, but also—and this is what makes them paradigms—the applications of those theories in the solution of important problems, along with the new experimental or mathematical techniques (such as the chemical balance in Traité élémentaire de chimie and the calculus in Principia Mathematica ) employed in those applications.

In the postscript to the second edition of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions Kuhn says of paradigms in this sense that they are “the most novel and least understood aspect of this book” (1962/1970a, 187). The claim that the consensus of a disciplinary matrix is primarily agreement on paradigms-as-exemplars is intended to explain the nature of normal science and the process of crisis, revolution, and renewal of normal science. It also explains the birth of a mature science. Kuhn describes an immature science, in what he sometimes calls its ‘pre-paradigm’ period, as lacking consensus. Competing schools of thought possess differing procedures, theories, even metaphysical presuppositions. Consequently there is little opportunity for collective progress. Even localized progress by a particular school is made difficult, since much intellectual energy is put into arguing over the fundamentals with other schools instead of developing a research tradition. However, progress is not impossible, and one school may make a breakthrough whereby the shared problems of the competing schools are solved in a particularly impressive fashion. This success draws away adherents from the other schools, and a widespread consensus is formed around the new puzzle-solutions.

This widespread consensus now permits agreement on fundamentals. For a problem-solution will embody particular theories, procedures and instrumentation, scientific language, metaphysics, and so forth. Consensus on the puzzle-solution will thus bring consensus on these other aspects of a disciplinary matrix also. The successful puzzle-solution, now a paradigm puzzle-solution, will not solve all problems. Indeed, it will probably raise new puzzles. For example, the theories it employs may involve a constant whose value is not known with precision; the paradigm puzzle-solution may employ approximations that could be improved; it may suggest other puzzles of the same kind; it may suggest new areas for investigation. Generating new puzzles is one thing that the paradigm puzzle-solution does; helping solve them is another. In the most favourable scenario, the new puzzles raised by the paradigm puzzle-solution can be addressed and answered using precisely the techniques that the paradigm puzzle-solution employs. And since the paradigm puzzle-solution is accepted as a great achievement, these very similar puzzle-solutions will be accepted as successful solutions also. This is why Kuhn uses the terms ‘exemplar’ and ‘paradigm’. For the novel puzzle-solution which crystallizes consensus is regarded and used as a model of exemplary science. In the research tradition it inaugurates, a paradigm-as-exemplar fulfils three functions: (i) it suggests new puzzles; (ii) it suggests approaches to solving those puzzles; (iii) it is the standard by which the quality of a proposed puzzle-solution can be measured (1962/1970a, 38–9). In each case it is similarity to the exemplar that is the scientists’ guide.

That normal science proceeds on the basis of perceived similarity to exemplars is an important and distinctive feature of Kuhn’s new picture of scientific development. The standard view explained the cumulative addition of new knowledge in terms of the application of the scientific method. Allegedly, the scientific method encapsulates the rules of scientific rationality. It may be that those rules could not account for the creative side of science—the generation of new hypotheses. The latter was thus designated ‘the context of discovery’, leaving the rules of rationality to decide in the ‘context of justification’ whether a new hypothesis should, in the light of the evidence, be added to the stock of accepted theories.

Kuhn rejected the distinction between the context of discovery and the context of justification (1962/1970a, 8), and correspondingly rejected the standard account of each. As regards the context of discovery, the standard view held that the philosophy of science had nothing to say on the issue of the functioning of the creative imagination. But Kuhn’s paradigms do provide a partial explanation, since training with exemplars enables scientists to see new puzzle-situations in terms of familiar puzzles and hence enables them to see potential solutions to their new puzzles.

More important for Kuhn was the way his account of the context of justification diverged from the standard picture. The functioning of exemplars is intended explicitly to contrast with the operation of rules. The key determinant in the acceptability of a proposed puzzle-solution is its similarity to the paradigmatic puzzle-solutions. Perception of similarity cannot be reduced to rules, and a fortiori cannot be reduced to rules of rationality. This rejection of rules of rationality was one of the factors that led Kuhn’s critics to accuse him of irrationalism—regarding science as irrational. In this respect at least the accusation is wide of the mark. For to deny that some cognitive process is the outcome of applying rules of rationality is not to imply that it is an irrational process: the perception of similarity in appearance between two members of the same family also cannot be reduced to the application of rules of rationality. Kuhn’s innovation in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions was to suggest that a key element in cognition in science operates in the same fashion.

4. Incommensurability and World-Change

The standard empiricist conception of theory evaluation regards our judgment of the epistemic quality of a theory to be a matter of applying rules of method to the theory and the evidence. Kuhn’s contrasting view is that we judge the quality of a theory (and its treatment of the evidence) by comparing it to a paradigmatic theory. The standards of assessment therefore are not permanent, theory-independent rules. They are not rules, because they involve perceived relations of similarity (of puzzle-solution to a paradigm). They are not theory-independent, since they involve comparison to a (paradigm) theory. They are not permanent, since the paradigm may change in a scientific revolution. For example, to many in the seventeenth century, Newton’s account of gravitation, involving action at a distance with no underlying explanation, seemed a poor account, in that respect at least, when compared, for example, to Ptolemy’s explanation of the motion of the planets in terms of contiguous crystalline spheres or to Descartes’ explanation in terms of vortices. However, later, once Newton’s theory had become accepted and the paradigm by which later theories were judged, the lack of an underlying mechanism for a fundamental force was regarded as no objection, as, for example, in the case of Coulomb’s law of electrostatic attraction. Indeed, in the latter case the very similarity of Coulomb’s equation to Newton’s was taken to be in its favour.

Consequently, comparison between theories will not be as straightforward as the standard empiricist picture would have it, since the standards of evaluation are themselves subject to change. This sort of difficulty in theory comparison is an instance of what Kuhn and Feyerabend called ‘incommensurability’. Theories are incommensurable when they share no common measure. Thus, if paradigms are the measures of attempted puzzle-solutions, then puzzle-solutions developed in different eras of normal science will be judged by comparison to differing paradigms and so lack a common measure. The term ‘incommensurable’ derives from a mathematical use, according to which the side and diagonal of a square are incommensurable in virtue of there being no unit that can be used to measure both exactly. Kuhn stressed that incommensurability did not mean non-comparability (just as the side and diagonal of a square are comparable in many respects). Even so, it is clear that at the very least Kuhn’s incommensurability thesis would make theory comparison rather more difficult than had commonly been supposed, and in some cases impossible.

We can distinguish three types of incommensurability in Kuhn’s remarks: (1) methodological—there is no common measure because the methods of comparison and evaluation change; (2) perceptual/observational—observational evidence cannot provide a common basis for theory comparison, since perceptual experience is theory-dependent; (3) semantic—the fact that the languages of theories from different periods of normal science may not be inter-translatable presents an obstacle to the comparison of those theories. (See Sankey 1993 for a useful discussion of Kuhn’s changing accounts of incommensurability.)

The incommensurability illustrated above whereby puzzle-solutions from different eras of normal science are evaluated by reference to different paradigms, is methodological incommensurability. Another source of methodological incommensurability is the fact that proponents of competing paradigms may not agree on which problems a candidate paradigm should solve (1962/1970a, 148). In general the factors that determine our choices of theory (whether puzzle-solutions or potential paradigm theories) are not fixed and neutral but vary and are dependent in particular on the disciplinary matrix within which the scientist is working. Indeed, since decision making is not rule-governed or algorithmic, there is no guarantee that those working within the same disciplinary matrix must agree on their evaluation of theory (1962/1970a, 200), although in such cases the room for divergence will be less than when the disputants operate within different disciplinary matrices. Despite the possibility of divergence, there is nonetheless widespread agreement on the desirable features of a new puzzle-solution or theory. Kuhn (1977, 321–2) identifies five characteristics that provide the shared basis for a choice of theory: 1. accuracy; 2. consistency (both internal and with other relevant currently accepted theories); 3. scope (its consequences should extend beyond the data it is required to explain); 4. simplicity (organizing otherwise confused and isolated phenomena); 5. fruitfulness (for further research). Even though these are, for Kuhn, constitutive of science (1977c, 331; 1993, 338) they cannot determine scientific choice. First, which features of a theory satisfy these criteria may be disputable (e.g. does simplicity concern the ontological commitments of a theory or its mathematical form?). Secondly, these criteria are imprecise, and so there is room for disagreement about the degree to which they hold. Thirdly, there can be disagreement about how they are to be weighted relative to one another, especially when they conflict.

An important focus of Kuhn’s interest in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions was on the nature of perception and how it may be that what a scientist observes can change as a result of scientific revolution. He developed what has become known as the thesis of the theory-dependence of observation, building on the work of N. R. Hanson (1958) while also referring to psychological studies carried out by his Harvard colleagues, Leo Postman and Jerome Bruner (Bruner and Postman 1949). The standard positivist view was that observation provides the neutral arbiter between competing theories. The thesis that Kuhn and Hanson promoted denied this, holding that the nature of observation may be influenced by prior beliefs and experiences. Consequently it cannot be expected that two scientists when observing the same scene will make the same theory-neutral observations. Kuhn asserts that Galileo and an Aristotelian when both looking at a pendulum will see different things (see quoted passage below).

The theory-dependence of observation, by rejecting the role of observation as a theory-neutral arbiter among theories, provides another source of incommensurability. Methodological incommensurability (§4.1 above) denies that there are universal methods for making inferences from the data. The theory-dependence of observation means that even if there were agreed methods of inference and interpretation, incommensurability could still arise since scientists might disagree on the nature of the observational data themselves.

Kuhn expresses or builds on the idea that participants in different disciplinary matrices will see the world differently by claiming that their worlds are different:

In a sense I am unable to explicate further, the proponents of competing paradigms practice their trades in different worlds. One contains constrained bodies that fall slowly, the other pendulums that repeat their motions again and again. In one, solutions are compounds, in the other mixtures. One is embedded in a flat, the other in a curved, matrix of space. Practicing in different worlds, the two groups of scientists see different things when they look from the same point in the same direction (1962/1970a, 150).

Remarks such as these gave some commentators the impression that Kuhn was a strong kind of constructivist, holding that the way the world literally is depends on which scientific theory is currently accepted. Kuhn, however, denied any constructivist import to his remarks on world-change. (The closest Kuhn came to constructivism was to acknowledge a parallel with Kantian idealism, which is discussed below in Section 6.4.)

Kuhn likened the change in the phenomenal world to the Gestalt-switch that occurs when one sees the duck-rabbit diagram first as (representing) a duck then as (representing) a rabbit, although he himself acknowledged that he was not sure whether the Gestalt case was just an analogy or whether it illustrated some more general truth about the way the mind works that encompasses the scientific case too.

Although the theory-dependence of observation plays a significant role in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , neither it nor methodological incommensurability could account for all the phenomena that Kuhn wanted to capture with the notion of incommensurability. Some of his own examples are rather stretched—for instance he says Lavoisier saw oxygen where Priestley saw dephlogisticated air, describing this as a ‘transformation of vision’ (1962/1970a, 118). Moreover observation—if conceived of as a form of perception—does not play a significant part in every science. Kuhn wanted to explain his own experience of reading Aristotle, which first left him with the impression that Aristotle was an inexplicably poor scientist (Kuhn 1987). But careful study led to a change in his understanding that allowed him to see that Aristotle was indeed an excellent scientist. This could not simply be a matter of literally perceiving things differently. Kuhn took the incommensurability that prevented him from properly understanding Aristotle to be at least partly a linguistic, semantic matter. Indeed, Kuhn spent much of his career after The Structure of Scientific Revolutions attempting to articulate a semantic conception of incommensurability.

In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions Kuhn asserts that there are important shifts in the meanings of key terms as a consequence of a scientific revolution. For example, Kuhn says:

… the physical referents of these Einsteinian concepts are by no means identical with those of the Newtonian concepts that bear the same name. (Newtonian mass is conserved; Einsteinian is convertible with energy. Only at low relative velocities may the two be measured in the same way, and even then they must not be conceived to be the same.) (1962/1970a, 102)

This is important, because a standard conception of the transition from classical to relativistic physics is that although Einstein’s theory of relativity supersedes Newton’s theory, what we have is an improvement or generalization whereby Newton’s theory is a special case of Einstein’s (to a close approximation). We can therefore say that the later theory is closer to the truth than the older theory. Kuhn’s view that ‘mass’ as used by Newton cannot be translated by ‘mass’ as used by Einstein allegedly renders this kind of comparison impossible. Hence incommensurability is supposed to rule out convergent realism, the view that science shows ever improving approximation to the truth. (Kuhn also thinks, for independent reasons, that the very ideas of matching the truth and similarity to the truth are incoherent (1970a, 206).)

Kuhn’s view as expressed in the passage quoted above depends upon meaning holism—the claim that the meanings of terms are interrelated in such a way that changing the meaning of one term results in changes in the meanings of related terms: “To make the transition to Einstein’s universe, the whole conceptual web whose strands are space, time, matter, force, and so on, had to be shifted and laid down again on nature whole.” (1962/1970a, 149). The assumption of meaning holism is a long standing one in Kuhn’s work. One source for this is the later philosophy of Wittgenstein. Another not unrelated source is the assumption of holism in the philosophy of science that is consequent upon the positivist conception of theoretical meaning. According to the latter, it is not the function of the theoretical part of scientific language to refer to and describe unobserved entities. Only observational sentences directly describe the world, and this accounts for them having the meaning that they do. Theories permit the deduction of observational sentences. This is what gives theoretical expressions their meaning. Theoretical statements cannot, however, be reduced to observational ones. This is because, first, theoretical propositions are collectively involved in the deduction of observational statements, rather than singly. Secondly, theories generate dispositional statements (e.g. about the solubility of a substance, about how they would appear if observed under certain circumstances, etc.), and dispositional statements, being modal, are not equivalent to any truth-function of (non-modal) observation statements. Consequently, the meaning of a theoretical sentence is not equivalent to the meaning of any observational sentence or combination of observational sentences. The meaning of a theoretical term is a product of two factors: the relationship of the theory or theories of which it is a part to its observational consequences and the role that particular term plays within those theories. This is the double-language model of the language of science and was the standard picture of the relationship of a scientific theory to the world when Kuhn wrote The Structure of Scientific Revolutions . Kuhn’s challenge to it lay not in rejecting the anti-realism implicit in the view that theories do not refer to the world but rather in undermining the assumption that the relationship of observation sentence to the world is unproblematic. By insisting on the theory-dependence of observation, Kuhn in effect argued that the holism of theoretical meaning is shared by apparently observational terms also, and for this reason the problem of incommensurability cannot be solved by recourse to theory-neutral observation sentences.

(Although it is true that Kuhn uses the expression ‘physical referent’ in the passage quoted above, this should not be taken to mean an independently existing worldly entity. If that were the case, Kuhn would be committed to the worldly existence of both Newtonian mass and Einsteinian mass (which are nonetheless not the same). It is implausible that Kuhn intended to endorse such a view. A better interpretation is to understand Kuhn as taking reference, in this context, to be a relation between a term and a hypothetical rather than worldly entity. Reference of anything like the Fregean, worldly kind plays no part in Kuhn’s thinking. Again this may be seen as a reflection of the influence of one or other or both of the (later) Wittgensteinian downplaying of reference and of the positivist view that theories are not descriptions of the world but are in one way or another tools for the organization or prediction of observations.)

Although Kuhn asserted a semantic incommensurability thesis in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions he did not there articulate or argue for the thesis in detail. This he attempted in subsequent work, with the result that the nature of the thesis changed over time. The heart of the incommensurability thesis after The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is the idea that certain kinds of translation are impossible. Early on Kuhn drew a parallel with Quine’s thesis of the indeterminacy of translation (1970a, 202; 1970c, 268). According to the latter, if we are translating one language into another, there are inevitably a multitude of ways of providing a translation that is adequate to the behaviour of the speakers. None of the translations is the uniquely correct one, and in Quine’s view there is no such thing as the meaning of the words to be translated. It was nonetheless clear that Quine’s thesis was rather far from Kuhn’s thesis, indeed that they are incompatible. First, Kuhn thought that incommensurability was a matter of there being no fully adequate translation whereas Quine’s thesis involved the availability of multiple translations. Secondly, Kuhn does believe that the translated expressions do have a meaning, whereas Quine denies this. Thirdly, Kuhn later went on to say that unlike Quine he does not think that reference is inscrutable—it is just very difficult to recover (1976, 191).

Subsequently, Kuhn developed the view that incommensurability arises from differences in classificatory schemes. This is taxonomic incommensurability. A field of science is governed by a taxonomy, which divides its subject matter into kinds. Associated with a taxonomy is a lexical network—a network of related terms. A significant scientific change will bring with it an alteration in the lexical network which in turn will lead to a re-alignment of the taxonomy of the field. The terms of the new and old taxonomies will not be inter-translatable.

The problematic nature of translation arises from two assumptions. First, as we have seen, Kuhn assumes that meaning is (locally) holistic. A change in the meaning of one part of the lexical structure will result in a change to all its parts. This would rule out preservation of the translatability of taxonomies by redefining the changed part in terms of the unchanged part. Secondly, Kuhn adopts the ‘no-overlap’ principle which states that categories in a taxonomy must be hierarchically organised: if two categories have members in common then one must be fully included within the other; otherwise they are disjoint—they cannot simply overlap. This rules out the possibility of an all-encompassing taxonomy that incorporates both the original and the changed taxonomies. (Ian Hacking (1993) relates this to the world-change thesis: after a revolution the world of individuals remains as it was, but scientists now work in a world of new kinds .)

Kuhn continued to develop his conceptual approach to incommensurability. At the time of his death he had made considerable progress on a book in which he related incommensurability to issues in developmental psychology and concept acquisition.

Kuhn’s historical work covered several topics in the history of physics and astronomy. During the 1950s his focus was primarily on the early theory of heat and the work of Sadi Carnot. However, his first book concerned the Copernican revolution in planetary astronomy (1957). This book grew out of the teaching he had done on James Conant’s General Education in Science curriculum at Harvard but also presaged some of the ideas of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions . In detailing the problems with the Ptolemaic system and Copernicus’ solution to them, Kuhn showed two things. First, he demonstrated that Aristotelian science was genuine science and that those working within that tradition, in particular those working on Ptolemaic astronomy, were engaged in an entirely reasonable and recognizably scientific project. Secondly, Kuhn showed that Copernicus was himself far more indebted to that tradition than had typically been recognized. Thus the popular view that Copernicus was a modern scientist who overthrew an unscientific and long-outmoded viewpoint is mistaken both by exaggerating the difference between Copernicus and the Ptolemaic astronomers and in underestimating the scientific credentials of work carried out before Copernicus. This mistaken view—a product of the distortion caused by our current state of knowledge—can be rectified only by seeing the activities of Copernicus and his predecessors in the light of the puzzles presented to them by tradition that they inevitably had to work with. While Kuhn does acknowledge the influence of causes outside science (such as a resurgence in Sun worship (1962/70a, 152–3)), he nonetheless emphasizes the fact that astronomers were responding primarily to problems raised within science. What appealed to them in Copernicus’ model was its ability to do away with ad hoc devices in Ptolemy’s system (such as the equant), to explain key phenomena in a pleasing fashion (the observed retrograde motion of the planets), and to explain away otherwise inexplicable coincidences in Ptolemy’s system (such as the alignment of the Sun and the centres of the epicycles of the inferior planets).

In the 1960s Kuhn’s historical work turned toward the early history of quantum theory, culminating in his book Black-Body Theory and the Quantum Discontinuity . According to classical physics a particle could possess any energy in a continuous range and if it changes energy it does so in a continuous fashion, possessing at some point in time every energy between the initial and final energy states. Modern quantum theory denies both these classical principles. Energy is quantised—a particle may possess only one of a set of discrete energies. Consequently if it changes in energy from one value to the next permitted value it does so discontinuously, jumping straight from one energy to the other without taking any of the intermediate (‘forbidden’) values. In order to explain the distribution of energy within a cavity (black-body radiation), Planck used the device of dividing up the energy states into multiples of the unit or ‘quantum’ h ν (where ν is the frequency of radiation and h is what subsequently became known as Planck’s constant). Planck did this in order to employ a statistical technique of Boltzmann’s whereby the range of possible continuous energies is divided into ‘cells’ of similar energies that could be treated together for mathematical purposes. Kuhn notes that Planck was puzzled that in carrying out his derivation, only by fixing the cell size at h ν could he get the result he wanted—the technique should have worked for any way of dividing the cells, so long as they were small enough but not too small. This work of Planck’s was carried out in the period 1900–1, which is the date tradition has accorded to the invention of the quantum concept. However, argued Kuhn, Planck did not have in mind a genuine physical discontinuity of energies until 1908, which is after Albert Einstein and Paul Ehrenfest had themselves emphasized it in 1905–6.

Many readers were surprised not to find mention of paradigms or incommensurability. Kuhn later added an Afterword, “Revisiting Planck”, explaining that he had not repudiated or ignored those ideas but that they were implicit in the argument he gave. Indeed the whole essay may be seen as a demonstration of an incommensurability between the mature quantum theory and the early quantum theory of Planck which was still rooted in classical statistical physics. In particular the very term ‘quantum’ changed its meaning between its introduction by Planck and its later use. Kuhn argues that the modern quantum concept was introduced first not by Planck but by Einstein. Furthermore, this fact is hidden both by the continued use of the same term and by the same distortion of history that has affected our conception of Ptolemy and Copernicus. As in Copernicus’ case, Planck has been seen as more revolutionary than in fact he was. In Planck’s case, however, this misconception was also shared by Planck himself later in life.

6. Criticism and Influence

Kuhn’s work met with a largely critical reception among philosophers. Some of this criticism became muted as Kuhn’s work became better understood and as his own thinking underwent transformation. At the same time other developments in philosophy opened up new avenues for criticism. That criticism has largely focussed on two areas. First, it has been argued that Kuhn’s account of the development of science is not entirely accurate. Secondly, critics have attacked Kuhn’s notion of incommensurability, arguing that either it does not exist or, if it does exist, it is not a significant problem. Despite this criticism, Kuhn’s work has been hugely influential, both within philosophy and outside it. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions was an important stimulus to what has since become known as ‘Science Studies’, in particular the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge (SSK).

In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions periods of normal science and revolutionary science are clearly distinguished. In particular paradigms and their theories are not questioned and not changed in normal science whereas they are questioned and are changed in revolutionary science. Thus a revolution is, by definition revisionary, and normal science is not (as regards paradigms). Furthermore, normal science does not suffer from the conceptual discontinuities that lead to incommensurability whereas revolutions do. This gives the impression, confirmed by Kuhn’s examples, that revolutions are particularly significant and reasonably rare episodes in the history of science.

This picture has been questioned for its accuracy. Stephen Toulmin (1970) argues that a more realistic picture shows that revisionary changes in science are far more common and correspondingly less dramatic than Kuhn supposes, and that perfectly ‘normal’ science experiences these changes also. Kuhn could reply that such revisions are not revisions to the paradigm but to the non-paradigm puzzle-solutions provided by normal science. But that in turn requires a clear distinction between paradigmatic and non-paradigmatic components of science, a distinction that, arguably, Kuhn has not supplied in any detail.

At the same time, by making revisionary change a necessary condition of revolutionary science, Kuhn ignores important discoveries and developments that are widely regarded as revolutionary, such as the discovery of the structure of DNA and the revolution in molecular biology. Kuhn’s view is that discoveries and revolutions come about only as a consequence of the appearance of anomalies. Yet it is also clear that a discovery might come about in the course of normal science and initiate a ‘revolution’ (in a non-Kuhnian sense) in a field because of the unexpected insight it provides and the way it opens up opportunities for new avenues of research. The double-helical structure of DNA was not expected but immediately suggested a mechanism for the duplication of genetic information (e.g. in mitosis), which had enormous consequences for subsequent biological research.

Kuhn’s incommensurability thesis presented a challenge not only to positivist conceptions of scientific change but also to realist ones. For a realist conception of scientific progress also wishes to assert that, by and large, later science improves on earlier science, in particular by approaching closer to the truth. A standard realist response from the late 1960s was to reject the anti-realism and anti-referentialism shared by both Kuhn’s picture and the preceding double-language model. If we do take theories to be potential descriptions of the world, involving reference to worldly entities, kind, and properties, then the problems raised by incommensurability largely evaporate. As we have seen, Kuhn thinks that we cannot properly say that Einstein’s theory is an improvement on Newton’s in the sense that the latter as deals reasonably accurately (only) with a special case of the former. Whether or not the key terms (such as ‘mass’) in the two theories differ in meaning, a realist and referentialist approach to theories permits one to say that Einstein’s theory is closer to the truth than Newton’s. For truth and nearness to the truth depend only on reference and not on sense. Two terms can differ in sense yet share the same reference, and correspondingly two sentences may relate to one another as regards truth without their sharing terms with the same sense. And so even if we retain a holism about the sense of theoretical terms and allow that revolutions lead to shifts in sense, there is no direct inference from this to a shift in reference. Consequently, there is no inference to the inadmissibility of the comparison of theories with respect to their truth-nearness.

While this referentialist response to the incommensurability thesis was initially framed in Fregean terms (Scheffler 1967), it received further impetus from the work of Kripke (1980) and Putnam (1975b), which argued that reference could be achieved without anything akin to Fregean sense and that the natural kind terms of science exemplified this sense-free reference. In particular, causal theories of reference permit continuity of reference even through fairly radical theoretical change. (They do not guarantee continuity in reference, and changes in reference can occur on some causal theories, e.g. Gareth Evans’s (1973). Arguing that they do occur would require more, however, than merely pointing to a change in theory. Rather, it seems, cases of reference change must be identified and argued for on a case by case basis.) Therefore, if taken to encompass terms for quantities and properties (such as ‘mass’), the changes that Kuhn identified as changes in meaning (e.g. those involved in the shift from Newtonian to relativistic physics) would not necessarily be changes that bear on reference, nor, consequently, on comparison for nearness to the truth. The simple causal theory of reference does have its problems, such as explaining the referential mechanism of empty theoretical terms (e.g.caloric and phlogiston) (c.f. Enç 1976, Nola 1980). Causal-descriptive theories (which allow for a descriptive component) tackle such problems while retaining the key idea that referential continuity is possible despite radical theory change (Kroon 1985, Sankey 1994).

Of course, the referentialist response shows only that reference can be retained, not that it must be. Consequently it is only a partial defence of realism against semantic incommensurability. A further component of the defence of realism against incommensurability must be an epistemic one. For referentialism shows that a term can retain reference and hence that the relevant theories may be such that the later constitutes a better approximation to the truth than the earlier. Nonetheless it may not be possible for philosophers or others to know that there has been such progress. Methodological incommensurability in particular seems to threaten the possibility of this knowledge. Kuhn thinks that in order to be in a position to compare theories from older and more recent periods of normal science one needs a perspective external to each and indeed any era of science–what he calls an ‘Archimedean platform’ (1992, 14). However, we never are able to escape from our current perspective. A realist response to this kind of incommensurability may appeal to externalist or naturalized epistemology. These (related) approaches reject the idea that for a method to yield knowledge it must be independent of any particular theory, perspective, or historical/cognitive circumstance. So long as the method has an appropriate kind of reliability it can generate knowledge. Contrary to the internalist view characteristic of the positivists (and, it appears, shared by Kuhn) the reliability of a method does not need to be one that must be evaluable independently of any particular scientific perspective. It is not the case, for example, that the reliability of a method used in science must be justifiable by a priori means. Thus the methods developed in one era may indeed generate knowledge, including knowledge that some previous era got certain matters wrong, or right but only to a certain degree. A naturalized epistemology may add that science itself is in the business of investigating and developing methods. As science develops we would expect its methods to change and develop also.

Kuhn’s influence outside of professional philosophy of science may have been even greater than it was within it. The social sciences in particular took up Kuhn with enthusiasm. There are primarily two reasons for this. First, Kuhn’s picture of science appeared to permit a more liberal conception of what science is than hitherto, one that could be taken to include disciplines such as sociology and psychoanalysis. Secondly, Kuhn’s rejection of rules as determining scientific outcomes appeared to permit appeal to other factors, external to science, in explaining why a scientific revolution took the course that it did.

The status as genuine sciences of what we now call the social and human sciences has widely been held in doubt. Such disciplines lack the remarkable track record of established natural sciences and seem to differ also in the methods they employ. More specifically they fail by pre-Kuhnian philosophical criteria of sciencehood. On the one hand, positivists required of a science that it should be verifiable by reference to its predictive successes. On the other, Popper’s criterion was that a science should be potentially falsifiable by a prediction of the theory. Yet psychoanalysis, sociology and even economics have difficulty in making precise predictions at all, let alone ones that provide for clear confirmation or unambiguous refutation. Kuhn’s picture of a mature science as being dominated by a paradigm that generated sui generis puzzles and criteria for assessing solutions to them could much more easily accommodate these disciplines. For example, Popper famously complained that psychoanalysis could not be scientific because it resists falsification. Kuhn’s account argues that resisting falsification is precisely what every disciplinary matrix in science does. Even disciplines that could not claim to be dominated by a settled paradigm but were beset by competing schools with different fundamental ideas could appeal to Kuhn’s description of the pre-paradigm state of a science in its infancy. Consequently Kuhn’s analysis was popular among those seeking legitimacy as science (and consequently kudos and funding) for their new disciplines. Kuhn himself did not especially promote such extensions of his views, and indeed cast doubt upon them. He denied that psychoanalysis is a science and argued that there are reasons why some fields within the social sciences could not sustain extended periods of puzzle-solving normal science (1991b). Although, he says, the natural sciences involve interpretation just as human and social sciences do, one difference is that hermeneutic re-interpretation, the search for new and deeper intepretations, is the essence of many social scientific enterprises. This contrasts with the natural sciences where an established and unchanging interpretation (e.g. of the heavens) is a pre-condition of normal science. Re-intepretation is the result of a scientific revolution and is typically resisted rather than actively sought. Another reason why regular reinterpretation is part of the human sciences and not the natural sciences is that social and political systems are themselves changing in ways that call for new interpretations, whereas the subject matter of the natural sciences is constant in the relevant respects, permitting a puzzle-solving tradition as well as a standing source of revolution-generating anomalies.

A rather different influence on social science was Kuhn’s influence on the development of social studies of science itself, in particular the ‘Sociology of Scientific Knowledge’. A central claim of Kuhn’s work is that scientists do not make their judgments as the result of consciously or unconsciously following rules. Their judgments are nonetheless tightly constrained during normal science by the example of the guiding paradigm. During a revolution they are released from these constraints (though not completely). Consequently there is a gap left for other factors to explain scientific judgments. Kuhn himself suggests in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions that Sun worship may have made Kepler a Copernican and that in other cases, facts about an individual’s life history, personality or even nationality and reputation may play a role (1962/70a, 152–3). Later Kuhn repeated the point, with the additional examples of German Romanticism, which disposed certain scientists to recognize and accept energy conservation, and British social thought which enabled acceptance of Darwinism (1977c, 325). Such suggestions were taken up as providing an opportunity for a new kind of study of science, showing how social and political factors external to science influence the outcome of scientific debates. In what has become known as social constructivism/constructionism (e.g. Pickering 1984) this influence is taken to be central, not marginal, and to extend to the very content of accepted theories. Kuhn’s claim and its exploitation can be seen as analogous to or even an instance of the exploitation of the (alleged) underdetermination of theory by evidence (c.f. Kuhn 1992, 7). Feminists and social theorists (e.g. Nelson 1993) have argued that the fact that the evidence, or, in Kuhn’s case, the shared values of science, do not fix a single choice of theory, allows external factors to determine the final outcome (see Martin 1991 and Schiebinger 1999 for feminist social constructivism). Furthermore, the fact that Kuhn identified values as what guide judgment opens up the possibility that scientists ought to employ different values, as has been argued by feminist and post-colonial writers (e.g. Longino 1994).

Kuhn himself, however, showed only limited sympathy for such developments. In his “The Trouble with the Historical Philosophy of Science” (1992) Kuhn derides those who take the view that in the ‘negotiations’ that determine the accepted outcome of an experiment or its theoretical significance, all that counts are the interests and power relations among the participants. Kuhn targeted the proponents of the Strong Programme in the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge with such comments; and even if this is not entirely fair to the Strong Programme, it reflects Kuhn’s own view that the primary determinants of the outcome of a scientific episode are to be found within science. External history of science seeks causes of scientific change in social, political, religious and other developments of science. Kuhn sees his work as “pretty straight internalist” (2000: 287). First, the five values Kuhn ascribes to all science are in his view constitutive of science. An enterprise could have different values but it would not be science (1977c, 331; 1993, 338). Secondly, when a scientist is influenced by individual or other factors in applying these values or in coming to a judgment when these values are not decisive, those influencing factors will typically themselves come from within science (especially in modern, professionalized science). Personality may play a role in the acceptance of a theory, because, for example, one scientist is more risk-averse than another (1977c, 325)—but that is still a relationship to the scientific evidence. Even when reputation plays a part, it is typically scientific reputation that encourages the community to back the opinion of an eminent scientist. Thirdly, in a large community such variable factors will tend to cancel out. Kuhn supposes that individual differences are normally distributed and that a judgment corresponding to the mean of the distribution will also correspond to the judgment that would, hypothetically, be demanded by the rules of scientific method, as traditionally conceived (1977c, 333). Moreover, the existence of differences of response within the leeway provided by shared values is crucial to science, since it permits “rational men to disagree” (1977c, 332) and thus to commit themselves to rival theories. Thus the looseness of values and the differences they permit “may . . . appear an indispensable means of spreading the risk which the introduction or support of novelty always entails” (Ibid.).

Even if Kuhn’s work has not remained at the centre of the philosophy of science, a number of philosophers have continued to find it fruitful and have sought to develop it in a number of directions. Paul Hoyningen-Huene (1989/1993), as a result of working with Kuhn, developed an important neo-Kantian interpretation of his discussion of perception and world-change. We may distinguish between the world-in-itself and the ‘world’ of our perceptual and related experiences (the phenomenal world). This corresponds to the Kantian distinction between noumena and phenomena. The important difference between Kant and Kuhn is that Kuhn takes the general form of phenomena not to be fixed but changeable. A shift in paradigm can lead, via the theory-dependence of observation, to a difference in one’s experiences of things and thus to a change in one’s phenomenal world. This change in phenomenal world articulates the sense in which the world changes as a result of a scientific revolution while also capturing Kuhn’s claims about the theory-dependence of observation and consequent incommensurability (Hoyningen-Huene 1990).

A rather different direction in which Kuhn’s thought has been developed proposes that his ideas might be illuminated by advances in cognitive psychology. One the one hand work on conceptual structures can help understand what might be correct in the incommensurability thesis (Nersessian 1987, 2003). Several authors have sought in different ways to emphasize what they take to be the Wittgensteinian element in Kuhn’s thought (for example Kindi 1995, Sharrock and Read 2002). Andersen, Barker, and Chen (1996, 1998, 2006) draw in particular on Kuhn’s version of Wittgenstein’s notion of family resemblance. Kuhn articulates a view according to which the extension of a concept is determined by similarity to a set of exemplary cases rather than by an intension. Andersen, Barker, and Chen argue that Kuhn’s view is supported by the work of Rosch (1972; Rosch and Mervis 1975) on prototypes; furthermore, this approach can be developed in the context of dynamic frames (Barsalou 1992), which can then explain the phenomenon of (semantic) incommensurability.

On the other hand, the psychology of analogical thinking and cognitive habits may also inform our understanding of the concept of a paradigm. Kuhn himself tells us that “The paradigm as shared example is the central element of what I now take to be the most novel and least understood aspect of [ The Structure of Scientific Revolutions ]” (1970a, 187). Kuhn, however, failed to develop the paradigm concept in his later work beyond an early application of its semantic aspects to the explanation of incommensurability. Nonetheless, other philosophers, principally Howard Margolis (1987, 1993) have developed the idea that habits of mind formed by training with paradigms-as-exemplars are an important component in understanding the nature of scientific development. As explained by Nickles (2003b) and Bird (2005), this is borne out by recent work by psychologists on model-based and analogical thinking.

Assessing Kuhn’s significance presents a conundrum. Unquestionably he was one of the most influential philosophers and historians of science of the twentieth century. His most obvious achievement was to have been a major force in bringing about the final demise of logical positivism. Nonetheless, there is no characteristically Kuhnian school that carries on his positive work. It is as if he himself brought about a revolution but did not supply the replacement paradigm. For a period in the 1960s and 1970s it looked as if there was a Kuhnian paradigm ‘historical philosophy of science’, flourishing especially in newly formed departments of history and philosophy of science. But as far as the history of science and science studies more generally are concerned, Kuhn repudiated at least the more radical developments made in his name. Indeed part of Kuhn’s fame must be due to the fact that both his supporters and his detractors took his work to be more revolutionary (anti-rationalist, relativist) than it really was.

Turning to the philosophy of science, it was clear by the end of the 1980s that the centreground was now occupied by a new realism, one that took on board lessons from general philosophy of language and epistemology, in particular referentialist semantics and a belief in the possibility of objective knowledge and justification. There is some irony therefore in the fact that it was the demise of logical positivism/empiricism that led to the rebirth of scientific realism along with causal and externalist semantics and epistemology, positions that Kuhn rejected.

One way of understanding this outcome is to see that Kuhn’s relationship on the one hand to positivism and on the other hand to realism places him in an interesting position. Kuhn’s thesis of the theory-dependence of observation parallels related claims by realists. In the hands of realists the thesis is taken to undermine the theory-observation dichotomy that permitted positivists to take an anti-realist attitude to theories. In the hands of Kuhn however, the thesis is taken, in effect, to extend anti-realism from theories to observation also. This in turn fuels the thesis of incommensurability. The fact that incommensurability is founded upon a response to positivism diametrically opposed to the realist response explains why much of Kuhn’s later philosophical work, which developed the incommensurability thesis, has had little impact on the majority of philosophers of science.

The explanation of scientific development in terms of paradigms was not only novel but radical too, insofar as it gives a naturalistic explanation of belief-change. Naturalism was not in the early 1960s the familiar part of philosophical landscape that it has subsequently become. Kuhn’s explanation contrasted with explanations in terms of rules of method (or confirmation, falsification etc.) that most philosophers of science took to be constitutive of rationality. Furthermore, the relevant disciplines (psychology, cognitive science, artificial intelligence) were not then advanced enough to to support Kuhn’s contentions concerning paradigms, or those disciplines were antithetical to Kuhn’s views (in the case of classical AI). Now that naturalism has become an accepted component of philosophy, there has recently been interest in reassessing Kuhn’s work in the light of developments in the relevant sciences, many of which provide corroboration for Kuhn’s claim that science is driven by relations of perceived similarity and analogy. It may yet be that a characteristically Kuhnian thesis will play a prominent part in our understanding of science.

Books by Thomas Kuhn

• 1957, The Copernican Revolution: Planetary Astronomy in the Development of Western Thought , Cambridge Mass: Harvard University Press.
• 1962/1970a, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Chicago: University of Chicago Press (1970, 2nd edition, with postscript).
• 1977a, The Essential Tension. Selected Studies in Scientific Tradition and Change , Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• 1978, Black-Body Theory and the Quantum Discontinuity , Oxford: Clarendon Press (2nd edition, Chicago: University of Chicago Press).
• 2000, The Road Since Structure , edited by James Conant and John Haugeland, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Selected papers of Thomas Kuhn

• 1959, “The Essential Tension: Tradition and Innovation in Scientific Research”, in The Third (1959) University of Utah Research Conference on the Identification of Scientific Talent C. Taylor, Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press: 162–74.
• 1963, “The Function of Dogma in Scientific Research”, in Scientific Change , A. Crombie (ed.), London: Heinemann: 347–69.
• 1970b, “Logic of Discovery or Psychology of Research?”, in Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge , edited by I. Lakatos and A. Musgrave, London: Cambridge University Press: 1–23.
• 1970c, “Reflections on my Critics”, in Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge , I. Lakatos and A. Musgrave (eds.), London: Cambridge University Press: 231–78.
• 1974, “Second Thoughts on Paradigms”, in The Structure of Scientific Theories F. Suppe (ed.), Urbana IL: University of Illinois Press: 459–82.
• 1976, “Theory-Change as Structure-Change: Comments on the Sneed Formalism” Erkenntnis 10: 179–99.
• 1977b, “The Relations between the History and the Philosophy of Science”, in his The Essential Tension , Chicago: University of Chicago Press: 3–20.
• 1977c, “Objectivity, Value Judgment, and Theory Choice”, in his The Essential Tension , Chicago: University of Chicago Press: 320–39.
• 1979, “Metaphor in Science”, in Metaphor and Thought , edited by A. Ortony Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 409–19.
• 1980, “The Halt and the Blind: Philosophy and History of Science”, (review of Howson Method and Appraisal in the Physical Sciences , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 31: 181–92.
• 1983a, “Commensurability, Comparability, Communicability”, PSA 198: Proceedings of the 1982 Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , edited by P. Asquith. and T. Nickles, East Lansing MI: Philosophy of Science Association: 669–88.
• 1983b, “Rationality and Theory Choice”, Journal of Philosophy 80: 563–70.
• 1987, “What are Scientific Revolutions?”, in The Probabilistic Revolution edited by L. Krüger, L. Daston, and M. Heidelberger, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 7–22. Reprinted in Kuhn 2000: 13–32.
• 1990, “Dubbing and Redubbing: The Vulnerability of Rigid Designation”, in Scientific Theories edited by C. Savage, Minnesota Studies in Philosophy of Science 14, Minneapolis MN: University of Minnesota Press: 298–318.
• 1991a, “The Road Since Structure”, PSA 1990. Proceedings of the 1990 Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association vol.2 , edited by A. Fine, M. Forbes, and L. Wessels., East Lansing MI: Philosophy of Science Association: 3–13.
• 1991b, “The Natural and the Human Sciences”, in The Interpretative Turn: Philosophy, Science, Culture , edited by D. Hiley, J. Bohman, and R. Shusterman, Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press: 17–24.
• 1992, “The Trouble with the Historical Philosophy of Science”, Robert and Maurine Rothschild Distinguished Lecture, 19 November 1991, An Occasional Publication of the Department of the History of Science, Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.
• 1993, “Afterwords” in World Changes. Thomas Kuhn and the Nature of Science , edited by P. Horwich, Cambridge MA: MIT Press: 311–41.

Other references and secondary literature

• Andersen, H., 2001, On Kuhn , Belmont CA: Wadsworth.
• Andersen, H., P. Barker, and X. Chen, 1996, “Kuhn’s mature philosophy of science and cognitive psychology”, Philosophical Psychology , 9: 347–63.
• Andersen, H., P. Barker, and X. Chen, 1998, “Kuhn’s theory of scientific revolutions and cognitive psychology”, Philosophical Psychology , 11: 5–28.
• Andersen, H., P. Barker, and X. Chen, 2006, The Cognitive Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Barnes, B., 1982, T.S.Kuhn and Social Science , London: Macmillan.
• Barsalou, L. W.. 1992, “Frames, concepts, and conceptual fields”, in A. Lehrer and E. F. Kittay, (eds.) Frames, Fields, and Contrasts: New Essays in Semantic and Lexical Organization , Hillsdale NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 21–74
• Bird, A., 2000, Thomas Kuhn , Chesham: Acumen and Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
• Bird, A., 2005, “Naturalizing Kuhn”, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society , 105: 109–27.
• Bird, A., 2007, “Incommensurability naturalized”, in L. Soler, H. Sankey, and P. Hoyningen-Huene (eds.), Rethinking Scientific Change and Theory Comparison (Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science 255), Dordrecht: Springer, 21–39.
• Bruner, J. and Postman, L., 1949, “On the Perception of incongruity: A paradigm”, Journal of Personality , 18: 206–23.
• Cohen, I. B., 1985, Revolution in Science , Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.
• Devitt, M., 1979, “Against incommensurability”, Australasian Journal of Philosophy , 57: 29–50.
• Doppelt, G., 1978, “Kuhn’s epistemological relativism: An interpretation and defense”, Inquiry , 21: 33–86;
• Enç, B. 1976, “Reference and theoretical terms”, Noûs , 10: 261–82.
• Evans, G. 1973 “The causal theory of names”, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society (Supplementary Volume), 47: 187–208.
• Fuller, S. 2000, Thomas Kuhn: A Philosophical History for our Times , Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Gutting, G., 1980, Paradigms and Revolutions , Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.
• Hacking, I. (ed.), 1981, Scientific Revolutions , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Hacking, I. (ed.), 1993, “Working in a new world: The taxonomic solution”, in Horwich 1993, 275–310.
• Hanson, N. R., 1958, Patterns of Discovery , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Horwich, P. (ed.), 1993, World Changes. Thomas Kuhn and the Nature of Science , Cambridge MA: MIT Press.
• Hoyningen-Huene, P., 1989, Die Wissenschaftsphilosophie Thomas S. Kuhns: Rekonstruktion und Grundlagenprobleme , translated as Hoyningen-Huene, P., 1993, Reconstructing Scientific Revolutions: Thomas S. Kuhn’s Philosophy of Science , Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Hoyningen-Huene, P., 1990, “Kuhn’s conception of incommensurability” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A , 21: 481–92.
• Hung, E. H.-C., 2006, Beyond Kuhn. Scientific Explanation, Theory Structure, Incommensurability and Physical Necessity , Aldershot: Ashgate.
• Kindi, V., 1995, Kuhn and Wittgenstein: Philosophical Investigation of the Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Athens: Smili editions.
• Kripke, S., 1980, Naming and Necessity , Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.
• Kroon, F. 1985, “Theoretical terms and the causal view of reference”, Australasian Journal of Philosophy , 63: 143–66.
• Lakatos, I. and Musgrave, A. (eds.), 1970, Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge , London: Cambridge University Press.
• Longino, H., 1994, “In search of feminist epistemology”, Monist , 77: 472–85.
• Margolis, H., 1987, Patterns, Thinking, and Cognition: A Theory of Judgment , Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Margolis, H., 1993, Paradigms and Barriers: How Habits of Mind Govern Scientific Beliefs , Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Martin, E., 1991, “The egg and the sperm: How science has constructed a romance based on stereotypical male-female sex roles”, Signs , 16: 485–501. Reprinted in E. Keller and H. Longino (eds.), 1996, Feminism and Science , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Masterman, M., 1970. “The nature of a paradigm”, in Lakatos and Musgrave 1970, 59–89.
• Mizrahi, M. (ed.), 2018, The Kuhnian Image of Science , London: Rowman and Littlefield.
• Musgrave, A., 1971, “Kuhn’s second thoughts”, British Journal of the Philosophy of Science , 22: 287–97.
• Nagel, E. 1961, The Structure of Science , London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
• Nelson, L. H., 1993, “Epistemological communities”, in L. Alcoff and E. Potter (eds.), Feminist Epistemologies , New York: Routledge.
• Nersessian, N., 1987, “A cognitive-historical approach to meaning in scientific theories”, in N. Nersessian (ed.) The Process of Science , Dordrecht: Kluwer, 161–77.
• Nersessian, N., 2003, “Kuhn, conceptual change, and cognitive science”, in Nickles 2003a, 178–211.
• Newton-Smith, W., 1981, The Rationality of Science , London: Routledge.
• Nickles, T., 2003a (ed.), Thomas Kuhn , Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press.
• Nickles, T., 2003b, “Normal science: From logic to case-based and model-based reasoning”, in Nickles 2003a, 142–77.
• Nola, R., 1980, “Fixing the Reference of Theoretical Terms”, Philosophy of Science , 47: 505–31.
• Pickering, A., 1984, Contructing Quarks: A Sociological History of Particle Physics , Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Popper, K., 1959, The Logic of Scientific Discovery , London: Hutchinson.
• Putnam, H., 1975a, Mind, Language, and Reality: Philosophical Papers Vol. 2 , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Putnam, H., 1975b, “The meaning of ‘meaning’” in Putnam 1975a.
• Renzi, B. G., 2009, “Kuhn’s evolutionary epistemology and its being undermined by inadequate biological concepts”, Philosophy of Science , 58: 143–59.
• Rosch, E., 1973, “On the internal structure of perceptual and semantic categories”, in T. E. Moore (ed.) Cognitive Development and the Acquisition of Language , New York NY: Academic, 111–44.
• Rosch, E. and Mervis C. B., 1975, “Family resemblances: Studies in the internal structures of categories”, Cognitive Psychology , 7: 573–605.
• Sankey, H., 1993, “Kuhn’s changing concept of incommensurability”, British Journal of the Philosophy of Science , 44: 759–74.
• Sankey, H., 1994, The Incommensurability Thesis , Aldershot: Avebury.
• Scheffler, I., 1967, Science and Subjectivity , Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill.
• Schiebinger, L., 1999, Has Feminism Changed Science? , Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.
• Shapere, D., 1964, “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions”, Philosophical Review , 73: 383–94.
• Sharrock, W. and Read, R., 2002, Kuhn: Philosopher of Scientific Revolution , Cambridge: Polity.
• Siegel, H., 1980 “Objectivity, rationality, incommensurability and more”, British Journal of the Philosophy of Science , 31: 359–84.
• Toulmin, S., 1970 “Does the distinction between normal and revolutionary science hold water?”, in Lakatos and Musgrave 1970, 39–5.
• Wray, K. B., 2011, Kuhn’s Evolutionary Social Epistemology , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

How to cite this entry . Preview the PDF version of this entry at the Friends of the SEP Society . Look up topics and thinkers related to this entry at the Internet Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO). Enhanced bibliography for this entry at PhilPapers , with links to its database.

• Thomas Kuhn—A Snapshot by Frank Pajares
• The Structure of Scientific Revolutions—An Outline and Study Guide by Frank Pajares
• Guide to Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Malcolm R. Forster
• Thomas Kuhn (Wikipedia)
• The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Wikipedia)
• Obituary in The New York Times by Lawrence Van Gelder

epistemology: evolutionary | epistemology: social | feminist philosophy, interventions: epistemology and philosophy of science | Feyerabend, Paul | incommensurability: of scientific theories | Lakatos, Imre | Popper, Karl | Quine, Willard Van Orman | rationality: historicist theories of | reference | relativism | scientific knowledge: social dimensions of | scientific realism | Wittgenstein, Ludwig

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Mirroring Change: Literature and Social Transformation

International Seminar

3rd & 4th October 2024

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Research and Cultural Forum (RCF)

Department of English

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Host Department : The Department of English at Pondicherry University has been an important educational destination for research scholars and students, ever since it commenced functioning in 1986. Over the years, the department has produced innumerable PhD and M. Phil scholars, in addition to a large number of postgraduate students. The faculty of the department with their different specializations and academic interests are at the forefront of innovative teaching and advanced research varying from contemporary literary, cultural and language studies to theoretical explorations. The department also runs a Post Graduate Diploma in Professional Communication in English, an add-on program, in much demand among students and employees.

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English and other communication-oriented courses. Another hallmark of the department is the Research and Cultural Forum (RCF) which acts as an avenue for scholars and students to showcase their research work and creative abilities. The department has also been at the forefront of organizing seminars, workshops and faculty development programs.

About Research and Cultural Forum (RCF):

Conceived thirty-five years ago as Research and Journal Alert Forum (RJAF) at the Department of English, Pondicherry University, RCF is a platform for research scholars and students of the department to discuss their research findings in various areas related to literature and culture and also present their creative talents. Run exclusively by the research scholars of the department, under the guidance of the faculty members and the support of MA students the forum hosts invited talks, workshops and interactive sessions by experts of national and international repute in the emerging areas of English Studies. The forum was recently renamed Research and Cultural Forum to integrate the department's research and cultural outputs. Now, it proudly undertakes the mission of bringing together and highlighting the role of literature in social transformation through this two-day International Seminar.

About the Seminar:

A Two-Day International Seminar has been planned by the Department of English on the 3rd & 4th of October 2024, with the focus area “Mirroring Change: Literature and Social Transformation”.

Literature has been able to predict, analyze, and critique social, economic and political change for a long time. This, in turn, has contributed to understanding social and political transformation through a medium that has been conventionally seen to be largely imaginative and fictional. While Orwell’s cautionary tale, 1984 predicted the effects of totalitarian regimes and surveillance, Harriet Beecher’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin “helped lay the groundwork for the American Civil War” (Kaufman, 2006: 18). If Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath brought into full view the travails of America during the Great Depression, Munshi Premchand’s Godaan brutally exposed poverty and the evils of the zamindari system in India. Literature has thus been constantly in sync with the changing silhouettes of society.

The conference aims to explore how literature has closely interacted with and mirrored the intricate matrix of the social and political milieu. This interaction has resulted in innumerable texts that have reflected these significant changes and helped us understand an ever-changing world. The wide gamut of social, political, economic, cultural, sociological and anthropological change has prompted the writer to ask questions, show up the mirror and sometimes even offer prescriptions for ills, thus making literature a vehicle for social transformation.  The conference aims to investigate and explore the significant role that literature has played in reflecting these changes, therefore acting as truth-seeker, sentinel, chronicler, and critic, all rolled into one.   

The conference aims to explore the interchange between literature and social transformation across varied arenas and can include, but is not restricted, to the following areas:

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Research Paradigms

• First Online: 01 January 2014

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• Paul Johannesson 3 &
• Erik Perjons 3  

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A research paradigm is a set of commonly held beliefs and assumptions within a research community about ontological, epistemological, and methodological concerns. The chapter starts with introducing the two most established research paradigms, positivism and interpretivism, and discusses their role in design science research. The chapter also presents two alternative research paradigms, critical realism and critical theory, and how these can influence design science work.

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Stockholm University, Kista, Sweden

Paul Johannesson & Erik Perjons

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© 2014 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

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Johannesson, P., Perjons, E. (2014). Research Paradigms. In: An Introduction to Design Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-10632-8_12

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-10632-8_12

Published : 12 September 2014

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Print ISBN : 978-3-319-10631-1

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