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i.e. from a collection of mutually accepted achievements (theories, exemplarysolutions, predictions, laws, and so on). In this sense, a paradigm is primarily amodel for conducting normal research. We shall now turn our attention to (1)the different components of a paradigm, and (2) to its most importantfunctions.Free download from www.hsrcpress.ac.zaCOMPONENTS OF PARADIGMSIf we were to analyze various traditions in the history of science, for exampleNewtonian mechanics, Darwinian biology, and so on, we would, according toKuhn, find that the researchers in those periods made a variety of commitmentsto components of the paradigm concerned.(i)In the first place, the scientists commit themselves to a specific theory orlaw, or to a set of theories or laws. The most obvious and probably themost binding (commitment) is exemplified by the sorts of generalizationswe have just noted. These are explicit statements of scientific law andabout scientific concepts and theories. While they continue to be honored,such statements help to set puzzles and to limit acceptable solutions(1970: 40). The specific theory (or theories) undoubtedly forms the coreof a paradigm — as Newton’s law of gravity and the three laws ofmovement constitute the core of the Newtonian paradigm.(ii) In the second place, the researcher espouses a given methodology or setof research techniques that are dictated by the paradigm. At a level loweror more concrete than that of laws and theories, there is, for example, amultitude of commitments to preferred types of instrumentation and to theways in which accepted instruments may legitimately be employed (1970:40). In this context, Kuhn refers to the varying role of experimentalmethods in the history of physiology.(iii) In the third place, scientists commit themselves to particular metaphysicalassumptions and preconceptions. In this context, Kuhn refers both to theassumptions concerning the research object (that which ought to bestudied), and to the assumptions concerning the manner in which it oughtto be researched (criteria for an acceptable view of science). Theseassumptions obviously overlap with (ii) because they contain certainmethodological implications. The nest of commitments proved to be bothmetaphysical and methodological. As metaphysical, it told scientists whatsort of entities the universe did and did not contain: there was onlyshaped matter in motion (Cartesian ontology — JM). As methodological,it told them what ultimate laws and fundamental explanations must belike: laws must specify corpuscular motion and interaction, andexplanation must reduce any given natural phenomenon to corpuscularaction under these laws. More important still, the corpuscular conceptionof the universe told scientists what many of their research problemsshould be (1970: 41).146