by “I can only note that the past is beautiful because one never realises an emotion at the time. It expands later, and thus we don’t have complete emotions about the present, only about the past.” -Virginia Woolf
History is a complex interpretation of the past, and it is often as multifaceted with nigh-infinite truths depending on the point of view of the one telling the history. Additionally, it is very hard to define the beginning of any specific moments in history, such as when they were initiated, or when they were catalyzed by surrounding events. One way to see history has been the paradigm, which is a sort of collection or generalization of worldviews and mindsets that characterized a large group of people. In a scientific setting, a paradigm can be used to show the understanding of the functionality of our universe. For those before Newton, things simply fell – in the thrall of earth’s gravity, as that was simply how it had always had been; no one had ever dared question as to why these things happened. His work defied the world and explained the unthinkable – to many, this is a prime example of a paradigm shift, where an entire way of thinking was changed by a new concept in one momentous jump in understanding.
Thomas Kuhn described paradigm shifts as gradual affairs, characterized by a series of accidents and discoveries that accumulated to a new way of understanding and explaining the world. These shifts could be years or decades in the making, only recognizable once the shift was made. In this way, reflection revealed the magnitude of the importance of their discoveries, and often led to full investigations being carried out on prior experiments in the case of contaminated evidence and misguided explanations of the world skewed by a force that was completely unknown. As an example, the discovery and exploration of radiation yielded a host of new knowledge on what was previously thought to be a well-explored and defined subject, which led to the review of many past experiments to determine if they had an unknown and unaccounted role in the findings. While radiation had been previously explored, the addition of x-rays shattered the beliefs that they had discovered all possible variations, and this discovery, while not necessarily of the magnitude to generate a shift in the paradigm of the time, was enough to generate further change and knowledge on the subject.
Radiation was thought to be understood and categorized, until an entirely new form showed up, throwing all prior knowledge into disarray. The discovery of radiation was not radically shifted by x -rays, but instead supplanted and expanded upon, clarifying prior data and knowledge. In this way, paradigm shifts cannot accurately describe scientific history – they cover broad swaths with generalizations while excluding the minutiae that shaped that knowledge. The continuous acquisition of knowledge that humanity undergoes on a daily basis shows the dynamic nature of history, that no section can be securely fit under a generalization of knowledge and thought, as it is characterized by the many intricacies and advancements that shifted the supposed paradigm over time.