Mary Ann Reidhead
Research Associate Department of Anthropology
maryannreidhead@umsl.edu
"Kuhn's Scientific Revolutions and Paradigm Shifts:
A Social Science Model of Anomalies and Revolutions in the Clerical Hierarchy of
the Catholic Church."
Abstract: In this paper I argue that Kuhn's model of scientific paradigm shifts maps well
as a theory for understanding culture crisis and culture change in religion. Using the
ongoing sex scandal in the Roman Catholic Church (RC) as my example, I will endeavor
to demonstrate that the process the church is going through directly parallels the cycles
of scientific revolutions, beginning with normal science, and progressing through the
discovery of anomalies, competing theories, disappearance of the bearers of the old
paradigm, and finally agreement on a new paradigm. Theologians and students of
change in the RC use the term "paradigm" to describe and predict change in the church,
but to my knowledge none has conducted a critical analysis of the appropriateness of
Kuhn's model to understand change in religious institutions. The purpose of this paper is
to map out the cycles of stability, crisis, and change that can be seen in the recent history
of the RC and hold these up against Kuhn's model to determine the extent to which the
stages, or cycles, in his model have direct analogs in the changes now afoot in the
church.
Relevant works:
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, by Thomas S. Kuhn
The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity, by
Peter Brown
The Catholic Church, by Hans Kung