I thought this quote from the article was interesting:
Kuhn’s book on scientific revolutions includes a famous quote from physicist Max Planck about what really causes paradigm shifts:
"A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."
Except, of course, scientists change their minds all the time based on the evidence.
Look at all the work in QM in the 20s and 30s. These guys had competing hypothesizes, and some won out based on the evidence. The people that held the opposing view? They quickly accepted the errors of their ways.
This is known as the bozo the clown argument. You know, somebody says "My perpetual motion machine will work! They laughed at Einstein, you know". And the reply is "yes, and they also laughed at bozo the clown".
Almost always, if everyone is against your idea, having tried it, you are probably wrong. There is probably no industry on the planet more open to change. We've gone from procedural to OO, functional programming is having a huge resurgence, static typed to dynamic typed, waterfall to extreme/agile/whatever, and so on.
And, despite the claims of the article, data flow programming has been alive and well the whole time. It hasn't been used much because of all the things that we have raised each time the topic is brought up, with no real response other than claims that we just don't get it, that people disagreeing is a sign that you are doing something right, and so on. I don't find it convincing at all. It's time to retire that Kuhn/Planck quote.
Oh, I don't think so. As its presence in Kuhn's book suggests, the kind of 'scientific truth' Planck was talking about is not just any hypothesis, but the much larger thing that we now (post-Kuhn) call a paradigm. For a counterexample, you'd need to show a paradigm shift occurring within the individual careers of the most established scientists in a community. QM isn't an example of that, for two reasons: it was the work of a new generation, and the debates you refer to were taking place within the new paradigm [1].
Your example is ironic, since it was Planck who put the Q in QM. If the history of QM refuted the quote as easily as all that, he'd never have said it in the first place.
(I do agree with you that most claims of a new paradigm turn out to be false.)
[1] That's not quite correct; they also took place before the new paradigm had crystallized—a time when (as Kuhn describes it) old models have broken down and lots of big things are up for grabs. Under such circumstances, minds change more fluidly. But such transitional circumstances are relatively rare and Planck was talking about the normal ones.
We've gone from procedural to OO, functional programming is having a huge resurgence, static typed to dynamic typed, waterfall to extreme/agile/whatever, and so on.
One of those you didn't get right? Guess which one?
Kuhn’s book on scientific revolutions includes a famous quote from physicist Max Planck about what really causes paradigm shifts:
"A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."