Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Essay
  • Published:

Paradigm shifts in science: insights from the arts

Nature Medicine volume 18, pages 1473–1477 (2012)Cite this article

Subjects

This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of a highly influential book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by the physicist and historian Thomas Kuhn1. This is the book that introduced the world to the principles of “paradigms” and “paradigm shifts.” Ironically, it is also the book in which the author underwent his own paradigm shift by debunking the prevailing theory of how scientific progress comes about.

Prior to Kuhn's 1962 book, historians and philosophers of science considered the scientific enterprise to be a rational endeavor in which progress and knowledge are achieved through the steady, day-to-day, painstaking accumulation of experimental data, accredited facts and new discoveries. Kuhn referred to this traditional approach as “normal science,” and he used the then-obscure word paradigm to refer to the shared ideas and concepts that guide the members of a given scientific field.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on Springer Link
  • Instant access to full article PDF
Buy now

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Figure 1: Instantly forming ideas.
Figure 2: Slowly forming ideas.

References

  1. Kuhn, T.S. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions: 50th Anniversary Edition 4th edn. (University of Chicago Press, 2012).

    Book  Google Scholar 

  2. Kuhn, T.S. The Essential Tension. 345 (University of Chicago Press, 1977).

    Book  Google Scholar 

  3. Bancroft, S. James Rosenquist: Time Blades. (Acquavella Contemporary Art, 2007).

    Google Scholar 

  4. Mangini, E. Giuseppe Penone talks about Idee di pietra (Ideas of Stone). Artforum Int. 49, 226–229 (2010).

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Joseph L. Goldstein is Chair of the Lasker Awards jury.,

    Joseph L Goldstein

Authors
  1. Joseph L Goldstein
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Joseph L Goldstein.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The author declares no competing financial interests.

Additional information

Lasker Award recipients receive an honorarium, a citation highlighting their achievement and an inscribed statuette of the Winged Victory of Samothrace, which is the Lasker Foundation's symbol of humankind's victory over disability, disease and death.

To read the formal remarks of speakers at the Lasker ceremony, as well as detailed information on this year's awardees, please refer to the Lasker website at http://www.laskerfoundation.org/.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Goldstein, J. Paradigm shifts in science: insights from the arts. Nat Med 18, 1473–1477 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nm.2923

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nm.2923

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing