Paradigms and Barriers

In Paradigms and Barriers Howard Margolis offers an

innovative interpretation of Thomas S. Kuhn's landmark idea

of "paradigm shifts," applying insights from cognitive

psychology to the history and philosophy of science.

Building upon the arguments in his acclaimed Patterns,

Thinking, and Cognition, Margolis suggests that the

breaking down of particular habits of mind—of critical

"barriers"—is key to understanding the processes through

which one model or concept is supplanted by another.

Margolis focuses on those revolutionary paradigm shifts—

such as the switch from a Ptolemaic to a Copernican

worldview—where challenges to entrenched habits of mind

are marked by incomprehension or indifference to a new

paradigm. Margolis argues that the critical problem for a

revolutionary shift in thinking lies in the robustness of the

habits of mind that reject the new ideas, relative to the

habits of mind that accept the new ideas.

Margolis applies his theory to famous cases in the history of

science, offering detailed explanations for the transition

from Ptolemaic to cosmological astronomy, the emergence of

probability, the overthrow of phlogiston, and the emergence

of the central role of experiment in the seventeenth century.

He in turn uses these historical examples to address larger

issues, especially the nature of belief formation and

contemporary debates about the nature of science and the

evolution of scientific ideas.

Howard Margolis is a professor in the Harris Graduate School

of Public Policy Studies and in the College at the University

of Chicago. He is the author of Selfishness, Altruism,

and Rationality and Patterns, Thinking, and

Cognition, both published by the University of Chicago

Press.