Page 42 - Cultures and Organizations

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Studying Cultural

Differences

At the start a new candidate for paradigm may have few supporters, and on
occasions the supporters’ motives may be suspect. Nevertheless, if they are
competent, they will improve it, explore its possibilities, and show what it
would be like to belong to the community guided by it. And if that goes on,
if the paradigm is one destined to win its fight, the number and strength of

the persuasive arguments in its favor will increase. More scientists will then
be converted, and the exploration of the new paradigm will go on. Gradually
the number of experiments, instruments, articles, and books based upon the
paradigm will multiply. Still more men, convinced of the new view’s fruitfulness,
will adopt the new mode of practicing normal science, until at last a few elderly
holdouts remain. And even they, we cannot say, are wrong.
—Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientifi c Revolutions

homas Kuhn (1922–96) was an American philosopher and histo-

Trian of science. The citation here is from his well-known book in
which he describes, with examples from various sciences, how scien-

tific innovation is brought about. In a given period certain assumptions

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