Paradigm shifts

After 40 yr of intensive research is it now time to assess the directions followed and what we have accomplished, time to recognize that we need to pose new questions and need fundamentally new probes to understand shock-compressed matter, and to critically examine the fundamental assumptions, implicit and explicit, that we have employed Is it now time for a paradigm shift to a more realistic, if more complex, description of shock-compressed matter Can we continue to view shock-compressed matter as an analog to a static high pressure that happens to be achieved in a short time and has a large thermal component attached ... 

Thomas Kuhn, in an influential work on the history of science entitled The Structure of Scientific Revolutions [knhntTO], used the phrase paradigm shift to describe the essence of what happens when one established way of looking at the world is - either suddenly, or over time - replaced by another. 

Though there was of course no way for Zuse to answer his second question (nor is there any way today), the fact that it is being asked at all underscores the essence of the second of the two paradigm shifts listed earlier in this chapter the notion that information is more fundamental than what have traditionally been used as fundamental variables (mass, energy, etc.). Zuse suggests that if only we could find an appropriate language or formalism with which to describe this primordial information, we would find, for example, that the information content of two or more interacting particles is conserved. 

Where Western science has heretofore been predicated on (1) static partitions of S2 (modulo our co-evolved senses and language), and (2) simple, linear chains of cause o effect, the generalized CA-based physics represents a paradigm shift to (1) causal webs, and (2) fully coevolving object interaction hierarchies and dynamic partitions. 

Lipton SA (2006) Paradigm shift in neuroprotection by NMDA receptor blockade memantine and beyond. Nat Rev Drug Discov 5 160-170... 

Tools shape how we think when the only tool you have is an axe, everything resembles a tree or a log. The rapid advances in instrumentation in the last decade, which allow us to measure and manipulate individual molecules and structures on the nanoscale, have caused a paradigm shift in the way we view molecular behavior and surfaces. The microscopic details underlying interfacial phenomena have customarily been inferred from in situ measurements of macroscopic quantities. Now we can see and fmgeT physical and chemical processes at interfaces. 

We have worked in the field of cheminformatics for about a decade, and in particular we have developed statistical and computer science technology for sequential screening and advocated a paradigm shift to its adoption within the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries (see Fig. 17.2). 

Chapman, K., Challenges, transitions, and paradigm shifts for information technology, Pharm. Technol., 19, 120, 1995. 

His periodic system did not meet with universal approval. This comes as no great surprise today, such revolutionary ideas would be termed a "paradigm shift". Since the time of Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz, scientists had been to formulating scientific laws in eguations. After all, had James Clerk Maxwell in a stroke of genius not very convincingly demonstrated the... 

Z. Jumps in knowledge arise from new theoretical concepts, such as the disproving of the phlogiston hypothesis ("the" paradigm shift) or the atom model of Dalton and the Periodic Table. An equally accelerating effect results from the discovery of new methods, such as electrochemistry, spectral analysis, and X-rays. 

LZ Benet, CY Wu, MF Hebert, VJ Wacher. Intestinal drug metabolism and antitransport processes A potential paradigm shift in oral drug delivery. J Controlled Release 39 139-143, 1996. 

Weiss KM. Is there a paradigm shift in genetics Lessons from the study of human diseases. Mol Phylogenet Evol 1996 5[1] 259—265. 

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