In short, a paradigm is a comprehensive model of understanding that provides a field's members with viewpoints and rules on how to look at the field's problems and how to solve them. "Paradigms gain their status because they are more successful than their competitors in solving a few problems that the group of practritioners has come to recognize as acute." (page 23)

Why understanding the Kuhn Cycle is important

The global environmental sustainability problem is so large, complex, novel, urgent, and its solution so difficult that solving the problem entails creation of a new paradigm. Just conceiving of the problem requires a fundamentally new way of thinking. Before The Limits to Growth defined the problem in 1972, there was little realization that human system growth could not be infinite. So called "progress" cannot go on forever. The environment cannot be tamed and subjugated, as mankind has done before to everything else that stood in the way of "progress."

Kuhn Cycle diagram

Environmentalism finds itself in the Pre-science step of the Kuhn Cycle. It lacks a valid paradigm for solving its central problem of sustainability. Yet the field's members are assuming they are in the Normal Science step, where a field has a paradigm that works well enough for that field to be called a bona fide science. This is a grave error.

Civilization as a whole is in the Model Crisis step. The model it uses to run itself, mostly free market democracy, a collection of national governments, and some central coordination like the UN and the World Bank, is no longer capable of solving the world's top problems. The model was good enough to navigate through the Industrial Revolution, two world wars, the Great Depression, the Cold War, and other problems. The model shows no sign of being able to solve the global sustainability problem. Because of this void modern environmentalism appeared to fill the gap, beginning with Silent Spring in 1962. But the gap is large and difficult. The new field has so far been unable to provide a new model, a new paradigm, capable of solving the sustainability problem.

The top problem to solve is thus not the sustainability problem itself, but finding the new paradigm needed to solve it. Environmentalism and civilization may not know it but they are both in search of a paradigm that works.

A short introduction to how the Kuhn Cycle works

Kuhn Cycle with descriptions

All new fields begin in Pre-science, where they have begun to focus on a problem area but are not yet capable of solving it or making major advances.

Efforts to provide a model of understanding that works eventually bear fruit. The field can at last make major progress on its central problems. This puts the field in the Normal Science step where it tends to stay longer than any other step.

Over time the field digs so deep into its area of interest it discovers new questions its current model of understanding cannot answer. As more of these anomalies ("violations of expectations") appear the model grows weaker. This is the Model Drift step.

If enough unsolved anomalies appear and the model cannot be patched up to explain them, the Model Crisis step is reached. Here the model is obviously no longer capable of solving the field's current problems of interest. It's a crisis because decisions can no longer be made rationally. Guesswork and intuition must be used instead. These tend to fail.

Finally out of the struggle to form a new model of understanding one or more viable candidates emerge. This begins the Model Revolution step. It's a revolution because the new model is a new paradigm. It's radically different from the old paradigm, so different the two are incommensurate. Each uses its own rules to judge the other. Thus believers in each paradigm cannot communicate well. This causes paradigm change resistance.

Once a single new paradigm is settled on by a few influential supporters, the Paradigm Change step begins. Here the field transitions from the old to the new paradigm while improving the new paradigm to maturity. Eventually the old paradigm is sufficiently replaced and becomes the field's new Normal Science. The cycle then begins all over again, because our knowledge about the world is never complete.

Osama, thank you for writing. Take a look at the article you will find some good food for thoughts in it. The paradigms you say we need to find are out there, if you take the sustainability problem at the central focus the new paradigm is perfect sustainability markets, if you take the social sustainability problem only the paradigm is perfect red markets, and if you take only the environmental sustainability problem the paradigm is perfect green markets. But you need to know that the Thomas Kuhn 's transformation look works ONLY UNDER ACADEMIC INTEGRITY, where scientist follow the scientific truth, weather politically palatable or not.

In 2012 RIO +20 if you were around there as consensus for paradigm change from traditional markets, traditional economies and traditional growth thinking to green markets, green economies and green growth thinking and under academic integrity we should have shifted to green markets, locally and globally in 2012.... But academic integrity broke as the green market shift under green market paradigm shift knowledge gaps was apparently not politically viable so the world went the way of dwarf green markets a la environmental pollution management. And now that broken academic integrity has allow even deep traditional market double downs with the move from traditional linear pollution production to traditional circular pollution production thinking.

Take a look at the question from the green market thinking point of view from 2012 to know:

Beyond Traditional Market Thinking: What is the Structure of the Perfect Green market?

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/302025169_Beyond_Traditional_Market_Thinking_What_is_the_Structure_of_the_Perfect_Green_market?_tp=eyJjb250ZXh0Ijp7ImZpcnN0UGFnZSI6ImhvbWUiLCJwYWdlIjoic2VhcmNoIiwicG9zaXRpb24iOiJwYWdlSGVhZGVyIn19

From Traditional Markets to Green Markets: A Look at Markets Under Perfect Green Market Competition

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/330701187_From_Traditional_Markets_to_Green_Markets_A_Look_at_Markets_Under_Perfect_Green_Market_Competition

If Going From Free Markets to Free Markets Is the Science Based Approach: What is Then the Model Structure, Price Structure, Choice Structure and the Knowledge Structure and Related Gaps of the 2012 Paradigm Shift From Perfect Traditional Market to Perfect Green Market Thinking?

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/348662415_If_Going_From_Free_Markets_to_Free_Markets_Is_the_Science_Based_Approach_What_is_Then_the_Model_Structure_Price_Structure_Choice_Structure_and_the_Knowledge_Structure_and_Related_Gaps_of_the_2012_Para

The Flipping of Traditional Economic Thinking: Contrasting The Working of Dwarf Green Market Thinking With That of Green Market Thinking to Highlight Main Differences and Implications

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/333640876_The_Flipping_of_Traditional_Economic_Thinking_Contrasting_The_Working_of_Dwarf_Green_Market_Thinking_With_That_of_Green_Market_Thinking_to_Highlight_Main_Differences_and_Implications

Transformation loop à la Thomas Kuhn and sustainability market thinking: applying Kuhn, sustainability shifts follow the pattern: anomalies accumulate under the traditional market paradigm (environmental externalities), a crisis emerges, alternative frameworks (green/sustainability markets) form an academic and policy consensus, and a paradigm shift occurs — but if consensus is weak or blocked (by vested interests or “dwarf” fixes), the loop stalls and only partial transitions happen.

chuck the article is about is about different roads to SUSTAINAILITY MARKETS, NOT DWARF SUSTAINABILITY MARKETS expanding Thomas Khun's thinking into SUSTAINABILITY THINKING