Paradigm Shift (Kuhn)

Thomas Kuhn, in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), described paradigm shifts as moments when the dominant framework of knowledge breaks and a new one takes hold. Science, he argued, does not progress smoothly but through ruptures that redefine what counts as truth. The concept has spread far beyond science, sometimes overused as a cliché for any change, landscape architecture conferences included! Yet its core insight remains: paradigms are not eternal, they collapse, and when they do, reality itself is reorganized in thought, not only intellectual but social and institutional.