Changes

It was with the emergence of [[Thomas Kuhn|Thomas Kuhn's]] ''Structures of Scientific Revolutions'' in the 1960s that the consensus about divergent beliefs was challenged.[[CiteRef::Bird (2008)]] Kuhn's "revolutionary" approach to scientific change radically diverged from his predecessors. On this view science has periods of ''normal science'' wherein the prevailing dogmas and core theories (the ''paradigm'') are unquestioned and science proceeds as a process of puzzle solving; this is followed by a ''crisis'' in which mounting anomalies cause scientists to question the theoretical foundations of the paradigm.[[Kuhn (1962)]] Crises may have no impact on normal science or they may result in a ''revolution'', what Kuhn calls "the emergence of a new candidate for paradigm and with the ensuing battle over its acceptance."[[Kuhn (1962)|p.84]] The present question of how divergent beliefs arise within communities fits nicely into this framework - a unified community starts by doing normal science, anomalies emerge within the paradigm, and a revolution occurs which splits the community. Subsequent work by philosophers in the field of scientific change would be coloured by the same kind of analysis of the historical record that shaped Kuhn's view of the subject, including the work done by [[Imre Lakatos]], [[Paul Feyerabend]], and [[Larry Laudan]].[[CiteRef::Laudan, Laudan, and Donovan (1988)|p.5]]

|History=This question was proposed by [[Hakob Barseghyan]] in 2015 with the publishing of the ''Laws of Scientific Change''.[[CiteRef::Barseghyan (2015)]]

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