In the previous two chapters, I both explained and offered a defense of Kuhn’s developed account of theory change. According to Kuhn’s developed account, revolutionary theory changes are no longer characterized as paradigm changes. In light of Kuhn’s mature account of theory change, it is worth examining his mature view of paradigms. To do this, it will be worth examining how he came to discover the notion of a paradigm in the first place.

Kuhn tells two different stories about his discovery of the concept “paradigm.” In the Preface to Structure Kuhn claims to have discovered the notion of a paradigm while working at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford in 1958/59. Interacting with many social scientists, Kuhn was struck by the differences between the natural sciences and the social sciences. In the former, there is broad agreement about the fundamentals of the field, whereas in the latter there is often significant disagreement about fundamentals. Kuhn claims that “attempting to discover the source of that difference led [him] to recognize the role in scientific research of what [he has] since called ‘paradigms’ ” (1962a/1996, x). Paradigms, as he explains, are “the universally recognized scientific achievements that … provide model problems and solutions to a community of practitioners” (x). Paradigms, Kuhn claims, are a standard feature of the natural sciences, but not of the social sciences.