Descartes — Arne

There is something to be said affirming that choice. I personally didn’t consider him, for his adhesion to religion, however much the times forced him into it. I mean, you can’t really shift many paradigms if you’re still beholden to organized gods for whatever grace…or indeed, disgrace…..you receive for your work.

Sounds like a good contender

The previous one was the shift to the Copernican solar system and the ensuing 'scientific revolution'.

The previous one was the shift to the Copernican solar system and the ensuing 'scientific revolution'. — Wayfarer

I see both as being merely openings up of new areas of study due to advances in technology, and of course new areas of study are going to involve new ways of understanding.

They're both paradigms, as per Kuhn's terminology. Quantum physics represented a significant departure from classical physics, particularly in its rejection of deterministic, Newtonian mechanics and its introduction of probabilistic and wave-particle duality concepts. Kuhn used quantum physics as an example of a scientific revolution because it challenged and replaced the existing paradigm of classical physics. The transition from classical to quantum physics marked a fundamental change in the way scientists viewed and understood the physical world, and it exemplifies Kuhn's idea of paradigm shifts in scientific development. He gfives the Copernican Revolution as another example to illustrate how scientific revolutions occur when a new paradigm replaces an older one. The acceptance of the heliocentric model required a significant change in the way scientists thought about the cosmos, and it represents a classic case of a paradigm shift in the history of science.

How about Rousseau as a candidate?

There were many competing explanations for what "naturally" formed societies, but he emphasized the idea that something was lost rather than apologize on the basis of some view of success.

Maybe this thing sucks.

They're both paradigms, as per Kuhn's terminology. Quantum physics represented a significant departure from classical physics, particularly in its rejection of deterministic, Newtonian mechanics and its introduction of probabilistic and wave-particle duality concepts. — Wayfarer

Newtonian mechanics never purported to deal with the microphysical, so they are not really bets understood as different paradigms, but as different areas of investigation.

The so-called Copernican Revolution came about as a result of more accurate observations made possible by the invention of the telescope and advances in telescope technology.

Sure, you can call these different paradigms, but I think the terminology is a bit overblown and potentially misleading.

Newtonian mechanics never purported to deal with the microphysical, so they are not really bets understood as different paradigms, but as different areas of investigation. — Janus

not the point. Newtonian mechanics ushered in the 'scientific revolution' which was another paradigm shift. It was far more than just 'accurate observations' as it involved the collapse of an entire cosmology and the ushering in of a wholly new worldlview.

Your remark reminds me of a famous anecdote, that on the day after the sinking of the Titanic, an Aberdeen newspaper was headlined 'Aberdeen Man Lost at Sea' ;-)

You misunderstand. I'm not denying that new areas of study can result in profound changes to human life. Many, if not most, of those changes are on account of the supercharging of technological development. The discovery of fossil fuels was arguably a significant driver of that, and the thermodynamics involved in the development of the steam engine and then the ICE have nothing to do with advances in Quantum Mechanics.

How about the 1927 Solvay Conference in Physics as the mother of all paradigm shifts in modern science and philosophy? I say it marks the boundary between the Modern and Post-Modern periods — Wayfarer

Darwin’s work made possible American Pragmatism, psychoanalysis and Piaget’s genetic epistemology, among other innovations. These ways of thinking are grounded in the understanding of unidirectional time as a fundamental organizing principle. Physicists in 1927 still tended to see time as irrelevant to physics ( and many still do). This was because their thinking was more consistent with Kant than with Hegel. Physics is just now catching up with post-Darwinian thinking. Then of course there’s Nietzsche, who wrote this 40 years before the Solvey conference:

“Physicists believe in a “true world” in their own fashion…. But they are in error. The atom they posit is inferred according to the logic of the perspectivism of consciousness—and it is therefore itself a subjective fiction. … And in any case they left something out of the constellation without knowing it: precisely this necessary perspectivism by virtue of which every center of force—and not only man—construes all the rest of the world from its own viewpoint, i.e., measures, feels, forms, according to its own force— They forgot to include
this perspective-setting force in “true being”—in school language: the subject.”(The Will to Power)

Jean Jacques Rousseau



Hey how could you not love that face? Radiates warmth and humanity.

“Physicists believe in a “true world” in their own fashion…. But they are in error. The atom they posit is inferred according to the logic of the perspectivism of consciousness—and it is therefore itself a subjective fiction ~ Nietszche — Joshs

An intriguing passage, but even if atoms are not the supposed ultimate indivisible particles of atomism, they are also something more than a subjective fiction.



'IBM in atoms' was a demonstration by IBM scientists in 1989 of a technology capable of manipulating individual atoms. A scanning tunneling microscope was used to arrange 35 individual xenon atoms on a substrate of chilled crystal of nickel to spell out the three letter company initials using single atoms. It was the first time that individual atoms had been precisely positioned on a flat surface (wiki).


On a side-note, do you think Nietzche's 'will to power' can be traced back to Schopenhauer?

The real power of modern physics is to render the goings-on of material bodies amenable to mathematical logic, and to extend it by methodically devising new mathematical concepts to describe as far as possible the unexpected behaviours of bodies. This enables great power by the application of logic to science and engineering with no regard for any purpose save the instrumental, the effective, to ‘what works’.

Paradigm shifts in science result from the scientific method, it seems to me. There is no analogous method in philosophy, and i can't really think of any paradigm shifts that have advanced the whole enterprise. Interesting question though.

Good description, and you're right, there is no analogous method in philosophy. However, there are analogous shifts.

For example, philosophy used to be the general name for various sciences, but when these sciences specialized there was a shift in philosophy towards questions that didn't concern the sciences, such as ethics, aesthetics, metaphysics, and some left-over questions from psychology. Then with the linguistic turn there was a shift towards the nature of language.

Analogous shifts occur also in the arts (not to be confused with traditions or fashions). For example, before the invention of photography most of all graphic and sculptural art were more or less used in a scientific manner for depicting the natural world. When photographs became useful for that, there was a shift in the arts towards symbolization of whatever couldn't be photographed, i.e. invisible phenomena, mental or abstract objects etc. later a lot of art became conceptual.

For example, philosophy used to be the general name for various sciences, but when these sciences specialized there was a shift in philosophy towards questions that didn't concern the sciences, such as ethics, aesthetics, metaphysics, and some left-over questions from psychology. Then with the linguistic turn there was a shift towards the nature of language. — jkop

Yes, science has been gradually annexing philosophical territory as it figures out a way to check an idea against the world in a publicly repeatable way. I'd less characterise these as paradigm shifts (which represent progress and no loss of territory) and more as straightforward redrawing of the boundaries of philosophy.

The linguistic turn is an interesting case. I think of it more as a fashion, but perhaps for some it really is a paradigm shift because, if successful, it renders large quantities of philosophy confused and obsolete. I just don't think it's successful.

IBM in atoms, 1989;

“There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom”, Feynman, 1959.

An intriguing passage, but even if atoms are not the supposed ultimate indivisible particles of atomism, they are also something more than a subjective fiction. — Wayfarer

What Nietzsche means by fiction is a bit tricky. He can’t mean false as opposed to what is truly real, given his assertion that nothing lies behind appearance. What he means by fiction is the claim of scientific facts to some sort of status that transcends their condition of possibility in contingency. What makes this thinking of atoms a fiction, then, is not that it isn’t a useful construct, but that it conceals from itself that as a construct, it is historically contingent, and subject to wholesale transformation of its sense via the movement of paradigmatic change.

On a side-note, do you think Nietzche's 'will to power' can be traced back to Schopenhauer? — Wayfarer

Nietzsche’s concept of will to power is a critique of Schopenhauer’s notion of will.

There are still harmless self-observers who believe in the existence of “immediate certainties,” such as “I think,” or the “I will” that was Schopenhauer's superstition: just as if knowledge had been given an object here to seize, stark naked, as a “thing-in-itself,” and no falsification took place
from either the side of the subject or the side of the object… Philosophers tend to talk about the will as if it were the most familiar thing in the world. In fact, Schopenhauer would have us believe that the will is the only thing that is really familiar, familiar through and through, familiar without pluses or minuses. But I have always thought that, here too, Schopenhauer was only doing what philosophers always tend to do: adopting and exaggerating a popular prejudice.

I'd less characterise these as paradigm shifts (which represent progress and no loss of territory) and more as straightforward redrawing of the boundaries of philosophy. — bert1

It occurs to me that the word 'progress' is used in related but different senses in science, philosophy, and art.

In all three there is a shift in the use of available methods, or in the understanding of the subject matter, that it is significant enough to influence many or most practitioners in their forthcoming work.

What is different is that progress in science is understood in terms of utility, i.e. the most recent science is typically more useful, efficient, advanced etc. than previous science. In philosophy progress is, for example, clarification of concepts (e.g. sense and reference), which may result in new ways to work with and understand philosophical questions. But it's debatable whether it is useful (a philosophical question). In the arts utility can be the opposite of progress, e.g. beauty being disinterested pleasure even. But it can be useful too, for example, the shift that occurred when artists learned how to construct perspective pictures.

There are still harmless self-observers who believe in the existence of “immediate certainties,” such as “I think,” or the “I will” that was Schopenhauer's superstition: just as if knowledge had been given an object here to seize, stark naked, as a “thing-in-itself,” and no falsification took place
from either the side of the subject or the side of the object… Philosophers tend to talk about the will as if it were the most familiar thing in the world. In fact, Schopenhauer would have us believe that the will is the only thing that is really familiar, familiar through and through, familiar without pluses or minuses. But I have always thought that, here too, Schopenhauer was only doing what philosophers always tend to do: adopting and exaggerating a popular prejudice.

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