Constituting Paradigms in the Study of the African Diaspora, 1900-1950.

Dedicated to the memory of Margaret Wade-Lewis and Barry Chevannes THAT THOMAS KUHN'S 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions announced a revolution in the history and philosophy of science by introducing and applying the concept of the "paradigm" to account for how science works and how it changes is now well known. (2) Kuhn argued that scientists operate in rimes of "normal science" under the influence of a paradigm that dictates not only what kinds of questions are permissible but what counts as evidence that would answer the questions generated under the paradigm. Scientific revolutions occur when a "paradigm shift" occurs, when one paradigm replaces another, quite incommensurable, paradigm; when scientists come to agree--as members of a scientific community--that the previous paradigm generated or evidenced a critical mass of anomalies that can no longer "fit" under the paradigm. These kinds of agreements, and the movement of scientific revolutions when this breaks down, are determined by developments within the science itself, according to Kuhn. This process entails the evaluations of a theory or set of theories. This evaluative process in turn entails comparison with the paradigmatic theory. These evaluations are based partially on observations which themselves are theory-dependent and not part of a neutral process.