Sönning, LukasLukasSönning0000-0002-2705-395XWerner, ValentinValentinWerner0000-0003-2669-35572021-10-082021-10-0820210024-39491613-396Xhttps://fis.uni-bamberg.de/handle/uniba/51673This introductory article sets the scene for the special issue of Linguistics entitled The replication crisis: implications for linguistics. We start out by sketching key issues surrounding the replication crisis, a state of methodological unrest that has caused turbulence across quantitative disciplines since the early 2000s. Given the trend throughout the language sciences towards a greater reliance on empirical methods, we argue that the linguistic community should be perceptive to this broader discourse and foster an open and lively discussion culture. To this end, the contributions to this special issue engage with methodological aspects that are at the core of this debate, taking an explicitly linguistic point of view. After an overview of the individual articles, we offer a perspective of the replication crisis from an angle inspired by the philosophy of science. We turn to Kuhn ([1962] 1996) to understand today’s methodological controversies in the context of his cyclical model of scientific progress. This allows us to interpret the replication crisis as a transitory stage, with revolutionary forces propagating a paradigm shift. We attempt to capture and contrast essential features of the status quo and what may eventually emerge as the new methodological paradigm in quantitative linguistics.engmethodologyparadigm shiftphilosophy of sciencequantitative linguisticsreplication crisisscientific revolution400article10.1515/ling-2019-0045