ABSTRACT

Thomas Kuhn’s treatment of the role of exemplars in normal science is extremely insightful, in my view, as one of the more successful attempts to explain how science really works. Yet I find his notion of exemplar (like current talk of memes) so elusive that I am tempted to say (echoing Steven Shapin 2 ): “Kuhnian exemplars do not exist, and this is a chapter about them!” My central claim will be that, insofar as Kuhn considered the key exemplars to be fixed and permanent constituents of a given instance of normal science, Kuhnian exemplars do not exist, or rarely. Kuhn’s treatment of exemplars in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (SSR) mirrors the strengths and weaknesses of his treatment of scientific change as a whole. The excessive rigidity of his treatment of exemplars (as I interpret him) leaves him unable to explain in any detail how a new, fundamental exemplar (as opposed to a specialized application of an existing one) comes into existence otherwise than through a sudden “aha” experience that then propagates through the individuals of the community; or how exemplars can then remain fixed within the moving frontier of normal science.