The Structure of Scientific Revolutions: Shifting Paradigms
September 11, 2008 by dr. lam
Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions had a profound impact on my thinking as an undergraduate major in European history at Princeton University. Kuhn’s thesis focused on how scientific research and understanding are driven by a specific model of the universe, until a crack appears in that model, that will eventually cause it to be supplanted by a new model. An example is how Newtonian physics dominated our thinking of the laws that governed the physical world until Einstein poked holes in it when looking at the deficiencies of that theory at the outsized extremes, e.g., the speed of light. The concept of gravity was replaced with the perception of curved space and a space-time continuum. Quantum mechanics surfaced to create a newer model that differed from Einsteinian physics by focusing on the deficiencies of Einstein’s theory at the sub-atomic level. Einstein spent the remainder of his life failing to create a “unified theory” to marry the discrepancies of both theories. Super-string theory emerged to provide the mathematical unity that Einstein sought and that only now is becoming unraveled as a viable theory.
With Kuhn’s thesis firmly in mind, I wrote my new book, Aging Face: the New Paradigm, to express a new paradigm shift. As you know, fat grafting represents the core of the paradigm shift, i.e., getting surgeons to abandon browlifting and excessive facelifting (I do facelifts in those who would benefit from them. In fact, I am doing one combined with a fat transfer today) and to see faces from a volumetric standpoint rather than a purely gravitational model. Hair restoration using stronger-density grafts in the central midscalp and feathering that forward along the perimeter with finer grafts. The trend toward tinier and tinier grafts throughout have left patients with weaker density and no more natural a result. Also, vertical, purse-string, cranial-based, short-incision facelifts (which I am doing today) that change the paradigm from pulling backward (does that fix gravity?) to pulling upward to counteract the effects of gravity.
Although Lakatos argued against Kuhn’s thesis and proffered that change is more gradual, I am firmly in Kuhn’s camp and have built my new book on his theory. We as humans tend to need models to perceive “reality”, and especially in the world of scientific advancement and knowledge, I think models are indispensable. However, Kuhn’s theories have been a bit bastardized in non-scientific circles.
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