Without theories, scientists' experiments would have no meaning for the world. Theories are the core of the scientific community; so understanding how to determine which theory prevails among others is a fundamental question. Kuhn was one of many bold scientists who attempted to provide an explanation for why one theory becomes accepted over another, as well as the process by which this occurs, known as the scientific revolution. Kuhn chooses to refer to a theory as a “paradigm,” which includes a wide range of definitions such as “a way of doing science in a specific field,” “statements about the world,” “methods of creating/analyzing data,” “habits of scientific thought and action” and “a way of seeing the world and interacting with it” (Smith, p.76). However, in this case, we will narrow the paradigm to have a definition similar to that of "theory", which is a system of ideas used to explain something; it can also be considered a model for the scientific community to follow. Kuhn's explanation of a scientific revolution brings to light an important problem: the problem of incommensurability. Before explaining what the problem of incommensurability is, we must see how the scientific revolution works according to Kuhn. Initially, there is a paradigm followed by scientists who use it to solve puzzles in the scientific community. However, once scientists can no longer solve multiple puzzles (anomalies) using that paradigm, the scientific community enters what is known as a crisis. The crisis phase occurs when the scientific community is in limbo because there is no new paradigm to replace the old one. After multiple paradigms have been created in an attempt to find the best one to solve the puzzles that the old one couldn't solve,...... middle of paper... one theory should be able to explain a wide variety of things, not just what was intended to be explained.4. Simplicity: a theory should be simple in its explanation and should bring order to phenomena that without the theory would not exist or would not be taken into consideration; in other words, it should be the basis of the phenomena.5. Fruitful” a theory should stimulate new research discoveries, in the sense that it should reveal new phenomena or discover relationships between phenomena. While Kuhn's 5 characteristics help give direction to the process of determining which paradigm should take over the old, it also presents many potential problems. One of the main problems is that scientists can still come to different conclusions using the same criterion due to different interpretations of the criterion. They may also deem some criteria more important than others.