Runtu wrote:cksalmon wrote:It seems that what David is saying, fundamentally, is that his underlying paradigm will never change. Given his spiritual witness, it will always be the case that Book of Mormon is true, etc. When he speaks of "paradigm shift," he seems to mean a reimagining of secondary issues such that the primary paradigm is never allowed to be contradicted.
This is far from a thorough-going embracing of the possibilty of true "paradigm shift." This is paradigm maintenance.
This is clear when David suggests that "pardigm shift" is a much better option than denying one's spiritual witness.
Paradigm maintenance.
CKS
Well, that's Kuhn's main thesis: we aren't in the business of discovering new things, but rather maintaining our current paradigms of belief. It's when those "crises of faith" (Kuhn's term) occur when we see anomalies that our belief system can't explain, we have to restructure the paradigm just enough to accommodate the anomaly.
Judging by David's post and the response to it, I'd say Kuhn was onto something.
I'll definitely take your word for it, as I've read a mere pittance of Kuhn's work. I was (mis?)remembering something from the secondary literature that spoke of the arising of a "new" paradigm after a certain critical tipping point of accumulated evidence has been reached and has rendered the "old" paradigm untenable for certain thinkers in a given field.
I ddin't think that merely restructuring a paradigm to accomodate new evidence or observations was the most radical instance of a Kuhnian paradigm shift.
Or, perhaps my version just reflects the way in which the concept has been mangled in its entrance into popular parlance?
CKS