ABSTRACT

When Thomas Kuhn (1962) wrote The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, its principal thesis engaged a number of scientists from a variety of fields who sought to judge the applicability of the concept of the paradigm shift to the development of theory in their own discipline. Ralph L. Rosnow, in his Paradigms in Transition: The Methodology of Social Inquiry (1981), discussed the evolution of thinking in American social psychology within the context of Kuhn’s sense of the paradigmatic structure of scientific endeavor. Kuhn’s thesis has been well absorbed by those interested in scientific metatheory, so only a brief summary of his position is necessary.