The way it’s done is chang­ing:

WHAT makes a sci­en­tific rev­o­lu­tion? Thomas Kuhn famously described it as a %u201Cparadigm shift%u201D%u2014the change that takes place when one idea is over­taken by another, usu­ally through the replace­ment over time of the gen­er­a­tion of sci­en­tists who adhered to an old idea with another that cleaves to a new one. These rev­o­lu­tions can be trig­gered by tech­no­log­i­cal break­throughs, such as the con­struc­tion of the first tele­scope (which over­threw the Aris­totelian idea that heav­enly bod­ies are per­fect and unchang­ing) and by con­cep­tual break­throughs such as the inven­tion of cal­cu­lus (which allowed the laws of motion to be for­mu­lated). This week, a group of com­puter sci­en­tists claimed that devel­op­ments in their sub­ject will trig­ger a sci­en­tific rev­o­lu­tion of sim­i­lar pro­por­tions in the next 15 years.

Will the century-​​old aca­d­e­mic sci­en­tific cul­ture adapt, or snap? What do those two out­comes mean, exactly?