The historian and philosopher of science, Thomas Kuhn, in his The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), himself revolutionized the way we should think about science.
Kuhn distinguishes periods from normal science, alternating with conceptual revolutions. Kuhn and countless others influenced by him use the “paradigm shift” to signify the transition from one established research paradigm to a new one.
Kuhn emphasizes the extrarational nature of this transition. This caused a still-alive controversy about the nature of the paradigm shift, as well as about science itself.
