The structure of personal revolutions

Just read Kuhn.

Every great shift in scientific paradigm involves a refactor of the language through which human understands and predicts natural phenomena. New paradigms emerge from anomalies and crises. Adopting a new paradigm is akin to working in a new world incommensurable with the ones where the non-converts still work from. Textbooks make scientific progress look linear and cumulative by glossing over the paradigm shifts.

Interestingly, a similar analysis is quite applicable to the evolution of an individual’s narrative of self. From anomalies (doing/getting something I thought I wanted does not bring satisfaction, why?) and crises (I really don’t like what I am doing), a new personal paradigm emerges (a refactor of wants and a new language for expressing them) which subjects a “larger” breadth of internal reality to greater predictability. Growth ensues, producing a new sense of self incommensurable with the older ones. Looking back, the evolution of the self seems linear, cumulative, and as inevitable as the unfolding of a great symphony.