Simulating Thomas Kuhn’s scientific revolutions: The example of the paradigm change from systems dynamics to agent based modelling

Abstract

Based on evolutionary game theory, this paper presents a model that allows to reproduce different patterns of change of the main paradigm of a scientific community. One of these patterns is the classical scientific revolution of Thomas Kuhn (The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1962), which completely replaces an old paradigm by a new one. Depending on factors like the acceptance rate of extra-paradigmatic works by the reviewers of scientific journals, there are however also other forms of change, which may e.g. lead to the coexistence of an old and a new paradigm. After analysing the different types of paradigm-changes and the conditions of their occurrence by means of EXCEL based simulation runs, the article explores the applicability of the model to a particular case: the spread of agent based modelling at the expense of the older systems dynamics approach. For the years between 1993 and 2012 the model presented in this article reproduces the observed bibliometric data remarkably well: it thus seems to be empirically confirmed.