The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

Kuhn shattered the "development-by-accumulation" myth—the idea that science is a linear, objective march toward truth. Instead, he argued that science operates in two distinct modes. Most of the time, scientists engage in "normal science," which Kuhn likened to puzzle-solving. They work within a "paradigm"—a shared map of the world—and focus on refining details rather than questioning the foundations.

This stability is periodically shattered by "revolutionary science." When a paradigm can no longer explain certain observations (anomalies), the community enters a crisis. This tension is only resolved by a paradigm shift: a total "re-mapping" of the field that changes not just the answers, but the very questions scientists are allowed to ask.

Kuhn’s breakthrough came while reading Aristotle’s Physics. Initially, Aristotle appeared to be a "dreadfully bad" scientist full of logical errors. However, Kuhn realized that if one understood the scientific conventions of Aristotle’s own time, his logic was brilliant and coherent. He wasn't "bad Newton"; he was just using a different paradigm.

This insight shifted the study of science from a search for "who got it right" to a sociological study of "how did they see the world." Kuhn argued that we cannot judge past scientists by modern standards because a paradigm shift changes the very lexicon and intellectual possibilities available to a generation.

A surprising claim of Kuhn’s is that new paradigms rarely win because they are more accurate at the start. When Copernicus proposed a sun-centered universe, his model was actually less accurate at predicting planetary positions than the old Ptolemaic system. It required more complex "epicycles" to work and lacked physical proof.

The shift happened because the new model offered a "promise" of future simplicity and better solutions. Kuhn sparked an uproar by suggesting that science is a "mélange of sociology, enthusiasm, and scientific promise" rather than a purely logical, determinate procedure. New theories don't just win on the math; they win by converting the community to a new way of seeing.

Scientists do not abandon a theory just because they find a fact that contradicts it. Kuhn observed that anomalies—data points that the current paradigm can't explain—are often dismissed as "experimental error" or "puzzles" that will be solved later. Practitioners will cling to a failing paradigm with great tenacity because losing faith in it would mean ceasing to be a scientist.

Only when these anomalies accumulate to a "crisis" point does the community become open to a revolution. Even then, the old paradigm is never discarded until a credible alternative is ready to take its place. Science doesn't stop because it's wrong; it only changes when it finds a new way to be right.

Once a revolution is over, the winners rewrite the textbooks. This process masks the "jagged" and episodic nature of history, presenting the current paradigm as the inevitable destination of all previous research. This "pedagogic" smoothing makes science appear more stable and cumulative than it actually is.

Kuhn noted that this rewriting extends to the history of the field itself. Past discoveries are reinterpreted to look like "steps" toward the present, rather than the radical departures they were. This ensures that "normal science" can continue with a sense of confidence, believing that every unsolved mystery is simply a puzzle that the current framework is guaranteed to solve.