Editorial

摘要

The debate on the cultural turn, started four issues ago and continued in this (see Shelley Baranowki's article), invites us to rethink Thomas Kuhn's concept of paradigm as applied to the dynamics of scientific change. According to Kuhn, science develops through revolutionary jumps between phases of 'normal science', jumps that are announced by an accumulation of 'anomalies' that cannot be easily included in 'normality' and that ultimately results in 'chaos'. This chaos is characterised by a proliferation of unconventional methods, fierce debates between 'old' and 'new' generations of scholars, neglect of tradition and the collapse of institutions. So are we on the brink of a paradigmc shift in the field of transport and mobility history?