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Randomenamegenerated t1_j7lw57g wrote

I recall from my own PhD studies that Kuhn used it many ways. Something like 60 different ways (I’ll have to check this, but will advised later if very wrong).

EDIT - “Masterman (1970) a friendly critic of Kuhns claimed to have spotted more than 20 different ways that Kuhn used the term paradigm in his book…”

So I was not accurate above, but I knew there was quite a lot of ways the term was variously originally used by Kuhn. I’ve also slightly paraphrased the above quote but retained the essence.

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zedority t1_j7mmbkc wrote

Kuhn himself mentioned this in a 1969 postscript appended to his original publication. The OP summarises Kuhn's postscript: Kuhn tried to clarify the matter by starting to use the term "disciplinary matrix" to describe more of what he was loosely referring to as "paradigms" initially. He started using the word "paradigm" specifically for what he now termed "exemplars": examples from existing scientific reseach in a field that are taken as exemplary models of how a key problem in that scientific field was solved, and which implicitly provide guidance for how currently unsolved problems in that field are best approached.

Hunh, it seems that the 1969 postscript at least is available online

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bildramer t1_j7ncdyy wrote

It makes sense - that's the word's etymology from the original Greek. Prefix para- + "that-which-is-shown", basically. In modern Greek, παράδειγμα simply means "example".

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