komponisto comments on Rationality Quotes March 2012 - Less Wrong

4 Post author: Thomas 03 March 2012 08:04AM

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Comment author: komponisto 02 March 2012 10:45:31PM 2 points [-]

WP lists "non-euclidean geometry" as a paradigm shift, BTW.

If Wikipedia says that, I don't think it is using the word the way Kuhn did.

For Kuhn, the word was, if anything, a sociological term -- not something referring to the structure of reality itself. (Kuhn was not himself a postmodernist; he still believed in physical reality, as distinct from human constructs.) So it seems to me that it would be entirely consistent with his usage to talk about paradigm shifts in mathematics, since the same kind of sociological phenomena occur in the latter discipline (even if you believe that the nature of mathematical reality itself is different from that of physical reality).