>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Carrol Cox" <cbcox at ilstu.edu>
>
> >That is, they thought of the earth as an
> > _animal_ -- an organism, and for them analogy was still the primary
>mode
> > of discovery. The shift away from _that_ set of premises, again, was a
> > serious "paradigm shift," in comparison to which the shifts of the
>last
> > 100 years, no matter how eath-shaking, are not remotely a paradigm
> > shift.
as kuhn notes, the degree of earth shakingness or revolutionariness doesn't have anything to do with it:
"These characteristics emerge with particular clarity from a study of, say, the Newtonian or the chemical revolution. It is, however, a fundamental thesis of this essay that they can also be retrieved from the study of many other episodes that were not so obviously revolutionary. For the far smaller professional group affected by them, Maxwell's equations were as revolutionary as Einstein's, and they were resisted accordingly. The invention of other new theories regularly, and appropriately, evokes the same response... for these men the new theory implies a change in the rules governing the prior practice of NORMAL SCIENCE (emphasis added). Inevitably, therefore, it reflects upon much scientific work they have already successfully completed. That is why a new theory, however special its range of application, is seldom or never just an increment to what is already known. Its assimilation requires the reconstruction of prior theory and the re evaluation of prior fact, an intrinsically revolutionary process that is seldom completed by a sing man and never overnight. <...> " (p 6-7)