The Structure of Catholic Revolutions? by Phil Lawler

By Phil Lawler, Catholic Culture, March 11, 2025

Phil Lawler has been a Catholic journalist for more than 30 years. He has edited several Catholic magazines and written eight books. Founder of Catholic World News, he is the news director and lead analyst at CatholicCulture.org. 

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, by Thomas Kuhn, had an enormous influence on academic discourse in the 1960s and 1970s, introducing the concept of the “paradigm shift” into common usage. Kuhn argued persuasively that scientific progress occurs not steadily, but in leaps and bounds, as new discoveries and/or new theories force researchers to abandon old assumptions and look at the world in entirely new ways. The new paradigm is accepted if it explains that world more successfully—in other words, if it produces better results. Hold that thought.

In 1980, the historian George Marsden used the concept of the “paradigm shift” to explain a 20th-century development among Protestants, in his book Fundamentalism and American Culture. He suggested that the “fundamentalists” were unable to accept a new paradigm of theological studies, and consequently remained stuck in their own paradigm, unable to adjust to a Protestant world that had passed them by. …