Science, normal

After such a revolution (in Kuhn s nomenclature), a period starts that he calls normal science . This means that the relevant field of science develops in a logical way by verification and falsification processes, but without fundamentally new discoveries. Kuhn showed that periods of normal science are based on paradigms. In classical Greek 7iapa5 vyna means a model, a shining example, but also admonition in the sense of a warning example. In science a paradigm may isolate a branch of science from new or potential developments. 

After some years or decades, a period of normal science ends in what Kuhn calls a crisis . The result of such a crisis is, in many cases, another scientific revolution. That revolution is characterized by a change of a paradigm. 

I will now discuss the development of the elucidation of the dediazoniation mechanism in terms of Kuhn s cycle normal science -> crisis -> revolution -> normal science . After Crossley et al. postulated the aryl cation as key intermediate of dediazoniation in 1940 and the strong support given to that hypothesis in Hammett s book Physical Organic Chemistry (1940), work in the area of dediazoniation... 

One may question the relevance of this problem, or, in Kuhn s terminology, whether it belongs to normal science or to revolutionary science . Kuhn has commented on this classification ... to answer the question normal or revolutionary one must first ask, for whom . He gives two examples the advent of Copernican astronomy was a revolution for everyone, but the discovery of molecular oxygen was a revolution only for chemists. 

I think it was worthwhile to take a specific case to show that conclusion. Its major purpose is to make Popperian logic and Kuhn s unpredictable circle of normal science, crisis, and revolution better known among chemists and to show how both theories - those of Popper and Kuhn - commingle in the development of scientific discoveries. A third phenomenon should also be mentioned, although it did not play a role in our specific case, namely serendipity, i. e., the gift of making valuable discoveries not sought for. The word serendipity was coined by the British writer Horace Walpole in a letter in 1754 based on the title of the Persian fairy-tale The... 

Parchmaim et al., 2006 Nieuwe Scheikunde in the Netherlands Driessen Meinema, 2003). For this purpose, we use a synthesis of framewoiks and combine this into a domain-specific curriculum theory (Van Berkel, 2005). VanBerkel s theory is based on the work of Roberts on curriculum emphases, of Schwab on curriculum stractures, of Kuhn on normal science and scientific training and that of Goodlad et al. on cmriculum representations. 

This quotation, illustrating the key problematic feature of dominant mainstream (traditional) chemistry courses described above, can be interpreted in terms of Kuhn s theory of normal science and normal science education. Kuhn underpinned his theory of the dynamics of normal science with a less well-known theory on the stmcture and function of tertiaiy and secondary science education (Siegel, 1990). Kuhn s theory (1963, 1970a, 1970b, 1970c, 1977a, 1977b) is instmctive to understand that there is specific view of science education which can be called, in Kuhn s vein, normal chemistry education, and that the dominant version of the school chemistry curriculum can be interpreted in this way. 

Kuhn (1970a, pp. 182, 187) describes how paradigms are taught as exemplars, which he describes as standard examples shared by a community of (future) scientists, on which other (end-of-chapter) problems are modelled. Through a textbook s exemplars the student is initiated into the disciphnaiy matrix current theory, methods, and criteria of a normal science. Kuhn s analysis of the stmcture of science textbooks, especially of the techniques of textbook presentation, leads him to the following conclusions ... 

Phase of normal science Fruitful application of paradigms. 

For chemistry as a whole, and for each of these chemical disciplines, there developed a historical (indeed, genealogical) legacy and a core literature, as well as a set of shared problems, practices, principles, and values. Thomas Kuhn has treated such disciplinary components as categories of the "paradigm" or the "disciplinary matrix," which are useful in understanding normal science before its transformation during a period of revolution.5 My concern is not revolution but the evolution of eighteenth-century chemical philosophy, whose practitioners aspired to understand the dynamics of matter, into twentieth-century theoretical chemistry, whose practitioners claimed to do so. 

Foucault, like his French predecessor and mentor, Gaston Bachelard, paid particular attention to the primacy in history of discursive breaks and ruptures in knowledge or belief systems.3 In this and in Foucault s emphasis on the relative coercion that disciplines exercised on their practitioners, he made arguments already familiar to Anglo-American scholars acquainted with Kuhn s characterizations of "normal science" and the reasons for a scientific community s coherent outlook. However, unlike Kuhn, Foucault declined to dissect the so-called hard sciences as objects of inquiry, restricting himself to discourses and power relationships in the medical, biological, and social sciences.4 However, Foucault did see the potential in the application of his method for the destruction of the demarcation between scientific and nonscientific spheres of action and belief. 

Our history has shown us how some leaders of research groups aspire to do more than direct their workers in the straightforward applications of disciplinary practice that we have learned to call "normal science."20 Rather, choosing to address the unsolved problems that are part of the disciplinary core, the group reaches out to incorporate ideas, techniques, and materials from specialties and disciplines other than their own. As Hull has reminded us from an evolutionary point of view, innovation is favored not by isolation but by a mixing of information. As he puts it, the exchange of genetic material is more important than its replication.21... 

The policy decision to act before science is certain does not, of course, dissolve the scientific uncertainties. Indeed, a strong argument can be made that an assessment of the type we have described should not pretend to represent normal science. Many of its outcomes are untestable with current methods this alone might disqualify it as a true science. 

My chagrin was bottomless and I fled, dizzy with embarrassment. So much for my bridge building efforts toward normal science. 

I would be the first to admit that it has not been possible to find a bridge between this theory and normal physics. Such a bridge may be neither possible nor necessary. We may find that normal science indicates what is possible, while the time theory I propose offers an explanation for what is. It is a theory that seems to explain how, of the class of all things possible, some events and things undergo the formality of actually occurring. It is clear to me that the theory cannot be disproven from without it can only be disproven by being found inconsistent within itself. Anyone is welcome to dismantle it if they are able this is what I have attempted to do and failed. 

Kuhn, in his book entitled The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, points out that in order for science to progress, two types of scientific activities are required [70]. He states, It is necessary for normal science to be to a large extent uncritical. If all scientists were critical of all parts of the framework in... 

At a conference in Oxford in 1961, Thomas S. Kuhn presented a paper on The Function of Scientific Dogmas in Scientific Research in which he summarized his thesis on paradigms, normal science, and scientific revolutions which was about to be published by the University of Chicago Press. [2] At the beginning of the Oxford paper, Kuhn noted the similarity of his and Michael Polanyi s views on the... 

Functowicz, S.O. and Ravetz, J.R. (1992) Three types of risk assessment and the emergence of post-normal science. In Krimsky, S., and Golding, D. (eds.) Social Theories of Risk. Praeger, Westport and London, pp 251-273. 

Kohler, R. E. (1985). Innovation in normal science Bacterial physiology. Isis 76 162-181. 

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