[Dean's World] Dean: The Lack of Kuhnian Revolutions in Biology

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Posted by Dean:
The Lack of Kuhnian Revolutions in Biology
http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1160138865.shtml


   Thomas Kuhn wrote one of the most influential scientific works of the
   late 20th century. It was on the nature of how major scientific
   breakthroughs occur. A "Kuhnian revolution" is probably more popularly
   known as a paradigm shift, such as when the old Aristotle view of
   physics was replaced by Newtonian physics, or when Ptolemy's view of
   stars and planets (that everything revolved around the Earth) to the
   Copernican view (with planets orbiting around stars).

   Richard Strohman had a series of very well-received and influential
   essays in [1]Nature Biotechnology on Kuhnian revolutions and molecular
   biology. He also noted areas which were ripe for such revolutions to
   occur, especially in the area of genetic determinism (which is looking
   shakier all the time as a workable paradigm). YBYL has reprinted two
   these landmark essays; you can find the first on [2]right here, with a
   link to the last at the bottom of the article.

References

   1. http://www.nature.com/nbt/index.html
   2. http://barnesworld.blogs.com/barnes_world/2006/10/richard_strohma.html