![]() Kuhn wrote The Structure of Scientific Revolutions to “produce a decisive transformation in the image of science by which we are now”-or, at least, were then-“possessed.” That image was of science always progressing in a straight line, theories building cumulatively on one another. What did Kuhn mean by that? And how is it related to his notion of a paradigm shift? Yet Kuhn also meant that we may want to say that new inventions, discoveries, and technologies change the world we’re already living in. As explained in “Abaddon’s Gate,” season 3, episode 13, Eros would transform into the Ring Gate, letting human beings respond to up to 1,373 different worlds by traveling to them. In a straightforward sense, the Epstein Drive let human beings respond to worlds in the Asteroid Belt by colonizing them. Kuhn argued that certain inventions or discoveries, including new technologies, are so significant that after them “we may want to say that … scientists,” and even the rest of us, “are responding to a different world.” The Epstein Drive and Eros are great examples of paradigm shifts. The title of the episode, “Paradigm Shift,” comes from philosopher Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. And, like Epstein Drive, Eros changed everything. Like the Epstein Drive, Eros’s trajectory is the result of technology, this time the protomolecule. That led in the story’s present to the asteroid Eros’s collision course with Earth until it got redirected into Venus just in the nick of time. The technology that Epstein is describing here came to be known as the “Epstein Drive.” It led to Mars’s independence from Earth, the colonization of the Asteroid Belt, and-eventually-the discovery of the protomolecule by Jules-Pierre Mao’s company, Protogen, on Saturn’s moon Phoebe. “Paradigm Shift,” season 2, episode 6 of The Expanse, mixes events from the story’s present with these voice-overs by Solomon Epstein from the story’s past. That’s the wonderful and terrible thing about technology. “My drive would give us the edge that we needed to finally break free from Earth and build a new world for ourselves. Paradigm Shifts Epstein Drive, Eros, and Thomas Kuhn By Nathaniel Goldberg ![]()
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