ABSTRACT
In the years following the publication of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, by Princeton professor of History Thomas Kuhn, his work has been read and taken very seriously by scholars in almost every discipline from physics to political science. Kuhn argued that scientific research takes place within a paradigm, a set of shared understandings that dictates what research is important and which problems need to be solved. Kuhn argues that the terms of analysis, the methodology of the scientist and the types of questions scientists ask are incommensurable across paradigms. A new paradigm represents an entirely new way of looking at the world. One of the broadest conclusions which can be drawn from Kuhn’s study is the notion that truth is relative to time and place. This is an historicist conception of knowledge which chips at the foundations of modern thought even as it preserves the modern affinity for constant change.
