In order to investigate the underlying mechanics of the non-linear dynamics that characterize the evolution of knowledge, one can linger either on the structure of the technology space itself or, alternatively, focus on the structure of the learning and discovery process of the community of researchers involved in the creation of knowledge. These radical transitions or paradigm shifts involve both a change in the activity of the members of the scientific community and in knowledge itself. The dynamics of scientific progress and technological evolution involve a sequence of periods of stagnation (deadlocks) and marginal, incremental change followed by brief periods of radical increase in performance accompanied by a swift adoption of a new and superior paradigm. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.Ĭompeting interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. DC acknowledges financial support by the Fund for Innovation and Competitiveness (FIC) of the Chilean Ministry of Economy, Development and Tourism, through the Millennium Scientific Initiative, Grant number IS 130005-MIDAP. CR-S, DC and MAF thank CONICYT: Anillo en Complejidad Social SOC-1101. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are creditedįunding: CR-S and MAF thank grant from Universidad del Desarrollo: Proyecto Interfacultades. Received: AugAccepted: AugPublished: September 29, 2015Ĭopyright: © 2015 Rodriguez-Sickert et al. However, social influence is not strong enough to seriously hamper individual discovery, and can act so as to empower successful individual pioneers who have conquered the new and superior paradigm.Ĭitation: Rodriguez-Sickert C, Cosmelli D, Claro F, Fuentes MA (2015) The Underlying Social Dynamics of Paradigm Shifts. For this parameter region, nevertheless, a conservative force is exerted by the representatives of the current paradigm. The occurrence of a paradigm shift becomes more likely when each member of the community attaches a small but positive weight to the experience of his/her peers. The efficiency of the search process is heavily dependent on the weight that agents posit on social influence. We find that the combination of these two forces together with random experimentation can account for both i) marginal change, that is, periods of normal science or refinements on the performance of a given technology (and in which the community stays in the neighborhood of the current paradigm) and ii) radical change, which takes the form of scientific paradigm shifts (or discontinuities in the structure of performance of a technology) that is observed as a swift migration of the knowledge community towards the new and superior paradigm. In the proposed model, agents learn in a physical-technological landscape, and weight is attached to both individual search and social influence. We develop here a multi-agent model of the creation of knowledge (scientific progress or technological evolution) within a community of researchers devoted to such endeavors.
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