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to bear on the spaces of exclusion. Foucault
suggested that the society that emerged in this
period can be better understood as one of gen-
eralizedpanopticism, where the ideal of surveil-
lance and ordered behaviour is spread through
cities as a whole. Foucault’s analysis has not
been without its critics, but his account,
together with his re-edition of the French text
with an introductory interview (1980d), helped
to bring Bentham’s work back into discussion.
Inhuman geography, Foucault’s arguments
have influenced historico-geographical studies
of poverty, welfare and workhouses (Driver,
1993) and contemporary critiques of security,
surveillance and incarceration (Hannah, 1997;
Dobson and Fisher, 2007). seSuggested reading
Bentham (1995); Foucault (1978); Wood (2007).paradigm An old English word meaning
pattern, exemplar or model, but rescued from
obscurity by the American philosopher and
historian of science Thomas Kuhn (1922–96)
in his short monographThe structure of scientific
revolutions(1970 [1962]), reportedly the most
cited book of the twentieth century. The pre-
cise definition of ‘paradigm’ is contentious,
with one critic counting 21 different meanings
in the first edition of Kuhn’s book (although
the second edition offered clarification:
Masterman, 1970). Roughly, a paradigm is
the constellation of values, assumptions,
methods and exemplars shared by a given
scientific community, making it what it is. A
paradigm shapes what scientists think about
something before they think it.
Kuhn’s use of ‘paradigm’ was part of his
larger project to provide an alternative to the
traditional history ofscience that stressed
science’s progressive and heroic character.
For Kuhn, most science was puzzle-solving,
with practitioners working within a common
frame of reference, shared assumptions, tech-
niques and standards; that is, a paradigm.
Consequently, the activities of scientists were
run of the mill, not heroic. Within this frame-
work of normal science, however, anomalies
occurred that could not be explained within
the prevailing paradigm. Given enough of
them, a crisis eventuated, precipitatingextra-
ordinary research(not mere puzzle-solving). If
successful, in the sense that the new research
accommodated the anomalies, revolutionary
change occurred in the form of aparadigm
shift, setting the blueprint for the next period
of normal science. Paradigms, however, by
their very constitution, were incommensurable.Scientific knowledge, therefore, moved not
as linear progress, but as incomparable,
discontinuous transformations (‘scientific
revolutions’).
Kuhn’s work garnered an enormous amount
of critical attention. There were the defin-
itional ambiguities already mentioned.
Kuhn’s response was to clarify ‘paradigm’ by
separating out the global characteristics of a
scientific community, labelled the ‘disciplinary
matrix’ (Kuhn, 1970 [1962], p. 182), from
‘concrete problem solutions’ (Kuhn, 1970
[1962], p. 186) such as the use of a particular
book or mathematical technique, termed
‘exemplars’ (Kuhn, 1970 [1962], pp. 186–7).
Other criticisms went to his substantive
claims. Toulmin (1970) argued historically
that paradigm change was not revolutionary,
but occurred all the time. The rarity was nor-
mal science. For this reason, Popper (1970,
p. 53) thought that ‘one ought to be sorry for’
Kuhn’s ‘normal scientist’. Likewise, Kuhn’s
thesis of incommensurability drew fire with
its implication that science does not progress.
Lakatos (1978), while accepting incommen-
surability between ‘hard cores’ of rival theor-
ies, claimed that one could still meaningfully
speak of progress using empirical prediction
and corroboration to construct research
programmes.
These are important points, but they do not
help us to understand why Kuhn’s book was
such a runaway success. There are many
reasons, but the most important was its anti-
rationalism, and its resonance with a similar
sentiment washing over a number ofhuman-
ities and social sciences from the 1960s
(where the book was read much more than in
science), and culminating inpostmodernism
andpost-structuralism. Whether he meant
to or not (and the evidence is that he did not),
Kuhn represented scientific knowledge not as
an unsullied, abstract form of rationality (the
progressive, heroic view), but relativistically as
mired in context-specific cultural beliefs and
ordinary practices, in paradigms. Not that this
was the interpretation of paradigm by geog-
raphers who first made use of Kuhn during
their own ‘scientific revolution’, the self-styled
quantitative revolutionthat was to usher in
spatial science through ‘extraordinary
research’. Perversely Kuhn’s ‘paradigm’ was
interpreted as a justification for that move-
ment’s rationalist scientific approach
(Haggett and Chorley, 1967) and paradigms
were treated as scientific models (cf. Billinge,
Gregory and Martin, 1984a; Mair, 1986).
Some later exponents, however, tried toGregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_P Final Proof page 518 1.4.2009 3:20pmPARADIGM