Kuhn's book did indeed
create its own paradigm shift. But curiously, Kuhn never seemed to realise that
those who change paradigms are nearly always a completely different kind of
scientist than those who extend existing ones. The paradigm breakers are those
few who "can't be told anything", who automatically question
everything, and who tend to either make a huge breakthrough or (more usually)
to pass on without a ripple. They are the few who blew their stacks over the
APS slogan "Science is Curiosity Satisfied" when it was accepted by a
large majority of APS members - non-paradigm-breakers all.
When it comes to things like the Periodic Table, it's worth
recalling that scientists clung on to Ptolemy's ideas for well over a thousand
years. The paradigm shift initiated by the Copernican revolution didn't render
obsolete the data built up over the previous millennia (indeed, it was used to
support Copernicus's ideas), it just set it in a new light. Given the fact that
scientists always change their minds, the same could happen here; the facts
will remain the same, but they will be put in a new light. If the past is
anything to go by, there is a very high probability this will happen. The
Periodic Table is now understood in a vastly different way to Mendeleev, who
invented it; Quantum Mechanics saw to that. Mendeleev knew nothing of electrons
and protons, etc. [You can find the details in Eric Scerri's book on The
Periodic Table.]
And, of course, Relativity Theory has meant that Geocentric models
of the solar system are now no less scientific than Heliocentric models are --
the Equivalence Principle lies behind this shift (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/spacetime-iframes/
and http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2005/10/03/does-the-earth-move-around-the-sun/)
It's not a terribly sucessful take on the subject, but nevertheless read H.E.Gardner's "Creating Minds" to get a sense of
those who kick science into progress.
