earlier this year i was reading a book called "the structure of scientific revolutions" which talked about a pattern in scientific fields. the pattern is that in the infancy of a field, there isn't much of a unified foundation or approach, but then there's some discovery or other advancement that makes it worthwhile for most people in the field to adopt that advancement as foundational for their work. after a while scientists inevitably start to reach the limits of the adopted paradigm, and you can tell this is happening because their work becomes complex and non-idiomatic. eventually a new framework is developed that simplifies the complex work happening at the boundaries of the existing paradigm, and a new paradigm is adopted.

an example of this is the transition from aristotelian to newtonian mechanics, and later the struggles that newtonian mechanics had when physicists were first grappling with quantum effects.

later, i noticed a similar pattern in european "early music". there would be a dominant paradigm guiding most "art music" for a period of time. artists would explore that paradigm throughout the period, and toward the end of the period their works would grow increasingly manneristic, that is, exaggerated and complex in style. you can see this in the "ars subtilior" period of medieval music, in the dense ornamentation and chromaticism of late 16th century renaissance music, and in the rococo period late in the baroque era.

another more specific example of this is the use of a diminished fourth as a consonant interval in pythagorean tuning, since a pythagorean diminished fourth is almost exactly a just major third.[1] in this case, the new paradigm around the corner was meantone temperament, which tuned major thirds justly or near-justly (although using a diminished fourth to approximate a just major third isn't as non-idiomatic as it sounds, since it predates ideas of triadic harmony in the tonal sense).

disclaimer that, of course, history is never as simple as a picture painted in such broad strokes, and we should avoid teleological thinking about these things.

i might just be rambling but hopefully some of this is interesting and i wanted to ask: are there any other places where you've noticed this pattern? in other professional or artistic fields? in other musical cultures besides western classical? in your own evolving style as a musician?

[1]: http://www.medieval.org/emfaq/harmony/pyth4.html#5

I can def see this in my own musical development.
a thing where I can also see it is webdesign

i definitely think this can be related back to on an individual level of musical development, not just by me, but just broadly speaking if it's something you practice at and explore enough. in extremely broad strokes - first you're feeling around for what you want to do, then you land on something that really works for you and that propels you to start orbiting around that something, explore its depths, plunder its mines. but then as you do this more and more, as you see how far you can push those boundaries outward while still doing that thing, eventually you happen upon a new thing, a shift in style that has a new focus, yet probably also retains and utilizes aspects of the former thing in a less focal way... since that's now a part of you too, just no longer deliberately front and center. and this repeats eventually of course

that's potentially a vague way to speak about this so just to use myself as an example:
1) i'll just call the first 17 years of my music making journey the first exploration phase before i really discovered my first paradigm. (maybe that's too reductive, since i had "a style" before then, but i would say 2020 marked the big step into a unique, less derivative voice.)
2) i figured out how to make the kind of glitch music i was interested in hearing, and doors opened up all around me. (i also started learning trackers not long after this!) i spent a great deal of time exploring the ways i could paint with those brushes, so to speak. there's a lot of experimentation there, especially codified in BotB OHB arcs of pure messing around with what glitchiness i could do, but really across all my output.
3) speaking closer to the present, it gets a little murkier to definitively say "this is a new paradigm" because, well, i'm living in it, but i'd say roughly the last 12 months have brought in a new shift where i'm taking all that glitchy weirdness and bringing it into more conventional forms. i certainly haven't abandoned all the experimental stuff (i'd say my most recent album

leans heavily in that direction), but my focus has sorta coalesced around how do i make this into equally head and heart music. this is something i've thought about a lot over the last few years (and still reflects on a good chunk of the last couple years' output) but lately it's really been what i've wanted to write the most. so i guess you could say that after sending the feelers out in a hundred directions from the glitch node, i've found a pretty clear node to proceed from. it won't ever define 100% of my output because i'm just like that, but it's definitely the main focal point at present.

i've already typed too much probably but i think this could even be applied to specific formats you've done enough work in - like i remember when i "unlocked" .it for myself, and that in and of itself was its own paradigm + subsequent exploration thereof