> Actually, no, this wasn't a Kuhnian change of paradigm. Why? Because a Kuhnian paradigm shift requires that the two paradigms are incommensurable. And that's

> Actually, no, this wasn't a Kuhnian change of paradigm. Why? Because a Kuhnian paradigm shift requires that the two paradigms are incommensurable. And that's not true for relativity vs. Newtonian mechanics. Relativity contains Newtonian mechanics as a particular approximation (low speeds and weak gravitational fields). So Newtonian mechanics is not incommensurable with relativity. I don't think that's an adequate analysis. Newtonian mechanics to General Relativity was indeed a Kuhnian paradigm shift because it required giving up simultaneity, messed with causality, and did away with the notion that space and time were simply an immutable Euclidean background on which particle interactions took place. Instead, spacetime was itself malleable by the entities that inhabited it, and was described by hyperbolic geometry. All of these were tough pills to swallow and required significant revisions to how people thought about reality. That Newtonian mechanics is embedded within GR is one data point to consider when deciding whether something is a paradigm shift, but it's not the only point that matters. By your argument, quantum mechanics was also not a paradigm shift because it reduces to classical mechanics in some limit due to decoherence. I think any interpretation of Kuhnian paradigm shifts that excludes arguably the two biggest revolutions in science, ever, cannot be correct.