What are the effects of a crisis on the work being done within a normal science
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Question
What are the effects of a crisis on the work being done within a normal science tradition?What does Kuhn mean when he claims that from another point of view, “every problem that normal science sees as a puzzle … can be seen as a counter-instance and thus as a source of crisis?” What are the effects of a crisis on the work being done within a normal science tradition?
What does Kuhn mean when he claims that from another point of view, “every problem that normal science sees as a puzzle … can be seen as a counter-instance and thus as a source of crisis?” What are the effects of a crisis on the work being done within a normal science tradition?
What does Kuhn mean when he claims that from another point of view, “every problem that normal science sees as a puzzle … can be seen as a counter-instance and thus as a source of crisis?”
Explanation / Answer
Model crisis :The model used to run itself, mostly free market democracy, a collection of national governments, and some central coordination like the UN and the World Bank, is no longer capable of solving the world's top problems. The model was good enough to navigate through the Industrial Revolution, two world wars, the Great Depression, the Cold War, and other problems. The model shows no sign of being able to solve the global sustainability problem. Because of this void modern environmentalism appeared to fill the gap, beginning withSilent Spring in 1962. But the gap is large and difficult. The new field has so far been unable to provide a new model, a new paradigm, capable of solving the sustainability problem.
In detail, the top problem to solve is thus not the sustainability problem itself, but finding the new paradigm needed to solve it. Environmentalism and civilization may not know it but they are both in search of a paradigm that works.
If enough unsolved anomalies appear and the model cannot be patched up to explain them, the Model Crisis step is reached. Here the model is obviously no longer capable of solving the field's current problems of interest. It's a crisis because decisions can no longer be made rationally. Guesswork and intuition must be used instead. These tend to fail.
In the Model Crisis step, your plan of action must be much deeper than the one in the Model Drift step because your life, so to speak, depends on getting out of this step and back to Normal Science as fast as possible.
For NGO or researchers, the challenge is stiffer because it's not the company that needs redesign. It's your core assumptions.
Changing your core assumption is not that easy:
It is not easy because of internal change resistance. People usually don't like change at deep levels because it's so disruptive. It requires changing so many habits and values, even affect your self-esteem. Deep change, such as to an organization's central paradigm, is thus frequently seen as threatening. Too many of these problems throws your paradigm, your model of understanding, into Model Crisis.
The only way out of Model Crisis is change, massive change. Your paradigm has failed. It's best to explain to everyone this is normal. It's how all fields advance. Thus the only way forward is to admit your present approach to problem solving is badly broken and must be radically changed so that the new approach, your new paradigm-to-be, works. This way you can get most of your people on board for the project.
2)"Normal Science", that is to say everyday, bread-and-butter science, is a "puzzle-solving" activity conducted under a reigning "paradigm".
This opens as a period called the "crisis", during which time new methods and approaches are permitted, since the older ones have proved incapable of rising to the task at hand (solving the anomaly).
Crisis is the essential tension implicit in scientific research. There is no such thing as research without counterinstances. These counterinstances create tension and crisis. Crisis is always implicit in research because every problem that normal science sees as a puzzle can be seen, from another viewpoint, as a counterinstance and thus as a source of crisis .
In responding to these crises, scientists generally do not renounce the paradigm that has led them into crisis. Rather, they usually devise numerous articulations and modifications of their theory in order to eliminate any apparent conflict. Some, unable to tolerate the crisis, leave the profession. As a rule, persistent and recognised anomaly does not induce crisis . Failure to achieve the expected solution to a puzzle discredits only the scientist and not the theory to evoke a crisis. Scientists who paused and examined every anomaly would not get much accomplished. To this end, they first isolate the anomaly more precisely and give it structure. They push the rules of normal science harder than ever to see, in the area of difficulty, just where and how far they can be made to work.
I hope this is useful !
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