Breaking the Chemical Paradigm in Electrochemical Engineering: Case Studies and Lessons Learned from Plating to Polishing

In his seminal work titled The Structure of Scientific Revolutions [1], history of science philosopher Thomas Kuhn discusses scientific progress and introduces the concept of “paradigms”. Since Kuhn’s work, the use of the word paradigm has dramatically increased without a clear understanding of its meaning [2]. Specifically, a paradigm is not the same as a hypothesis or the scientific method. Simply stated, scientific paradigms are universally recognized concepts providing a framework of assumptions, methods and ways of thinking by a community of practitioners. As such, scientific paradigms are open-ended, providing the tools for a community of scientists, engineers and technologists to solve new problems within their particular field of endeavor. The resulting successful application of the scientific paradigm towards solving emerging scientific, engineering and technological problems further strengthens the paradigm within the community of practitioners, and increases the number of practitioners advocating the paradigm.