ABSTRACT
In 1962, Thomas Kuhn caused quite a stir with the publication of his The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.1 This overturned the previously held and very widespread view that the natural sciences were simple, cumulative enterprises, success stories of straightforward advance in which each generation of scientists built on the achievements of the previous one. Instead, Kuhn argued, key scientific breakthroughs took place when one world view – one way of seeing, describing and explaining the world – was radically rejected and replaced by a completely different world view, or, in a more specific sense, a ‘paradigm’. Thus, the flat earth was replaced by a round earth; the sun circling the earth was replaced by the earth circling the sun; Newton was replaced by Einstein.
