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he professor of philosophy and history of
science Thomas Kuhn, in his book, The
Structure of Scientific Revolutions, deals with the
concept of paradigm—a scientific worldview accepted at any
particular period of time. Sometimes scientists ally them-
selves closely with a paradigm, but over time as a result of
new discoveries, it becomes clear that their paradigm was
wrong. For example, at one time the commonly-held world-
view was Claudius Ptolemy's model of an Earth-centered
universe. It was a very strong paradigm, but was toppled by
the discoveries of Copernicus, and a new paradigm was ac-
cepted in its place. According to Kuhn, the world of science
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