ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I wish to show that Thomas Kuhn's theory of scientific revolutions is consonant with the account of exemplarity advanced in this book. I follow and further develop Kuhn's distinction between paradigms in the narrow and the broad sense. A paradigm in the narrow sense is a singular exemplar (paradigmatic sample), whereas a paradigm in the broad sense includes social practices surrounding this exemplar. I highlight Kuhn's insight that part of the reason for the emergence of a singular paradigm lies outside that paradigm and beyond the scope of scientific rationality. Then I defend Kuhn's incommensurability thesis. The current paradigm cannot be compared with past paradigms because we cannot retrieve them in the broad sense. I further argue that Kuhn's theory exhibits the example-exemplar différance. The normative exemplar and the descriptive example are inextricably mixed. Finally, I show that Kuhn's theory follows a paracomplete logic. It can be neither included in nor excluded from the scope of its self-referential applicability.
