Scientific Revolutions

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Thomas Kuhn, an American Philosopher of Science in the twentieth century, introduced the controversial idea of "paradigm shifts" in his 1962 book "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions." This essay will discuss paradigm shifts, scientific revolutions, mop up work, and other key topics that Kuhn writes about in "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" in great detail. This essay will explain what Kuhn means by mop up work, by drawing on the broader view of paradigms that he presents and explaining how paradigms are born and develop such that they structure the activities of normal science in specific ways, and this essay will show how this kind of mop up work can, in certain circumstances, lead to a new paradigm instead of more normal science.

Kuhn characterizes most of normal science as "mop up work." According to Kuhn normal science is "research firmly based upon one or more past scientific achievements, achievements that some particular scientific community acknowledges for a time as supplying the foundation for its further practice." This means that normal science is the everyday work that scientists perform within a specific paradigm. Kuhn writes that older scientific paradigms are "mopped up" when newer scientific paradigms comes into play, "cumulative acquisition of unanticipated novelties proves to be an almost non-existent exception to the rule of scientific development." "Mop up work" occurs when an older scientific paradigm is replaced and evolves into a newer scientific paradigm. Rather than the newer scientific paradigm adding to the older scientific paradigm, the newer scientific paradigm most often results in a revolution or a paradigm shift. A revolution or paradigm shift occurs an older scientific par...

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...few and in between.

Kuhn sees most of normal science as "mop up work" because most of the time older scientific paradigms are replaced and evolve into newer scientific paradigms; using this premise one can come to the conclusion that Kuhn believes the majority of people who believe that science is cumulative is wrong. Since scientific paradigms do not cumulate upon one another, older scientific paradigms must be mistaken so that newer scientific paradigms can come about. The older scientific paradigms are necessary because without them there would be no "mop up work" to be revolutionized. Finally, there are three phases that science goes through: the pre paradigm phase, normal science, revolutionary science. As can be seen by the preceding information scientific revolutions go through very specific phases and they are necessary for the evolution of science.

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