Posted by Steve Price on March 01, 1999 at 11:57:18:
In Reply to: Re: Hey Brother, Can You Spare a Paradigm? posted by Michael Wendorf on March 01, 1999 at 10:50:22:
Dear Michael,
Without intending to be contentious about the matter, I differ. "Science" is actually a whole lot of people, many of whom hold the orthodox position (the most widely held paradigm of the time), but some of whom do not. Given my background, Copernicus isn't good example for me to use for argument. On the other hand, I am a biologist and am right now smack in the middle of my course, "Revolutions in Biology", so I am reasonably comfortable with that subject.
Let's take the Darwinian revolution that occurred in what ruggies would call the third quarter of the 19th century. Darwin was not the only person in his time to believe that new species arose by evolution from pre-existing ones, or that the driving force for this was natural selection. And, when his revolution was over, there were still substantial numbers of people who thought he was wrong (there still are). That is, there was more than one paradigm before Darwin, and more than one afterwards.
Nonetheless, I think almost anyone familiar with the subject (inlcuding those who disagree with Darwin's position) would agree that Darwin was biology's most significant revolutionary and that ORIGIN OF SPECIES generated a clear, long lasting paradigm shift in the discipline. This, I believe, is true in spite of the fact that "science" was not unanimous in its disbelief of evolution by natural selection before Darwin nor was it unanimous in acceptance of it after Darwin. Indeed, a paradigm shift is almost unthinkable without the notion that two paradigms can coexist simultaneously (for a while, at least). The alternative is to imagine the shift happening more or less simultaneously to everyone. That just isn't how things happen.
"Science" is not monolithic, and there are many subareas within biology (and, I am sure, other sciences as well) in which there are multiple schools of thought based on differing simultaneous paradigms.
There is much more lack of unanimity about details in Rugville than there is about basic principles, which appear to me to reflect some fairly widely accepted underlying paradigm, at least in the community of mainstream collectors.
Steve Price