Scientific Paradigm |
Situation in Social Sciences |
Pre-paradigmatic Period"continual competition between a number of distinct views of nature ...... incommensurable ways of seeing the world and of practicing science in it" (SSR,62:4) |
This is the situation where we find in the present state of knowledge of social sciences. |
Normal Science1) Scientist can take a paradigm for granted, he need no longer, in his major works, attempt to build his field anew, starting from first principles and justify the use of each concept introduced. (SSR,62:19-20) |
It is frequent that social scientists have to give justification to the concepts employed in research. |
| 2) Text Books - in education, there is a reliance on text-book up to the doctoral level of education. | In undergraduate course, students are usually referred to journal articles of competing schools of thoughts. |
| Exemplar
- "The concrete problem-solutions that students encounter from the start of their scientific education" (SSR,70:87) "Some of the technical problem- solving found in the periodical literature that scientists encounter during their post-educational research career". (SSR,72:187) |
There
are very few "problem- solutions" during the
process of education. The ANOVA "paradigm" discussed by Caroll (1972) and the Hypothetical- statistical "paradigm" discussed by Douglas(1972) in social sciences bear some resemblance to this characteristic. Academics or new emerging academics striving to have publications would look into journals to identify the "topic" (so called "literature review") that is likely to be acceptable and what is the mode of methodological analysis (e.g. whether it is chi-square, anova or multiple- regression) and the "characteristics" of a research article that would be likely to be accepted (or marketable). |
| 4) Communication among "scientists" - mainly through journal articles which are only meant to be readable to scientist of the same kind. | This is more or less the same accusation to the present day "academic writings" which appear to be only readable to academics. |
| 5) Puzzle-solving: "paradigm is a criterion for choosing problems that, while the paradigm is taken for granted, can be assumed to have solutions". (SSR,62:37) Similarly, a jigsaw puzzle which is constituted by pieces which are cut from a given picture and thus guarantees a definite solution | There is no guarantee that there would be a solution. Yet, there is a tendency for researchers to "wish" for statistical significant result rather than no significance. Seemingly, that statistical significance is the solution (success) and non-significance is the anomaly (failure). |
| 6) Knowledge Building | ¡@ |
| a)"a highly cumulative enterprise with the steady extension of the scope and precision of scientific knowledge". (SSR,62:52) | To a smaller extent, it occurs within a particular school of thought, apparently with a slower "speed" in terms of progress. |
| b)"Does not aim at novelties of fact or theory and when successful finds none". (SSR,62:52) | It appears that in social sciences, the nature of research tends to be more exploratory, and some would be looking for new ideas |
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1) Appearance of Anomaly -
a) continuous failure in experiments where such failure cannot be explained by imperfect instrumentation.
b) accidental/randomly observed anomaly not explained by existing theories in paradigm.
2) Condition of recognition of anomaly
"novelty ordinarily emerges only for the man who, knowing with precision what he should expect, is able to recognize that something has gone wrong" ... " the more precise and far-reaching that paradigm is, the more sensitive are indicator it provides of anomaly and hence of an occasion for paradigm change. (SSR,62:65)
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3) Role of Philosophical analysis
"In periods of acknowledged crisis that scientists have turned to philosophical analysis as a device for unlocking the riddles of their field." (SSR,62:87)
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4) Paradigm debate
"competing paradigms regularly raise questions that cannot be resolved by the criteria of normal science" ... "Two scientific schools disagree about what is a problem and what is a solution, they will inevitably talk through each other when debating the relative merits of their respective paradigms. In the partially circular agreements that regularly result, each paradigm will be shown to satisfy more or less the criteria that it dictates for itself and to fall short of a few of those dictated by its opponent." (SSR,62:108-9)
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5) The Process of revolution
"Paradigms are not corrigible by normal science ... are terminated not by deliberation and interpretation, but by a relatively sudden and unstructured event like the gestalt switch." (SSR,62:121)
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6) Resolution of Revolutions
"A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it" (Max Planck quoted in SSR,62:150).
"the decision must be based less on past achievement than on future promise" (SSR,62:150) (entrepreneurship in science !)
"The man who embraces a new paradigm at an early stage must often do so in defiance of the evidence provided by problem-solving. He must, that is, have faith that the new paradigm will succeed with the many large problems that confront it, knowing only that the old paradigm has failed with a few. A decision of that kind can only be made on faith". (SSR,12:157)
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7) Age of the champions of new paradigms
They, eg. Newton, Einstein, are usually young and not so much involved in the old paradigm.
Different Specialization in Substantive area possesses different paradigms
Q : Whether a single atom of helium was or was not a molecule.
Chemist : The atom of helium was a molecule because it behaved like one with respect to the Kinetic theory of gases.
Physicist : The helium atom was not a molecule because it displayed no molecular spectrum.