These three classes of problems—determination of significant fact, matching of facts with theory, and articulation of theory—exhaust, I think, the literature of normal science, both empirical and theoretical. They do not, of course, quite exhaust the entire literature of science.

But if the aim of normal science is not major substantive novelties—if failure to come near the anticipated result is usually failure as a scientist—then why are these problems undertaken at all? Part of the answer has already been developed. To scientists, at least, the results gained in normal research are significant because they add to the scop

Perhaps the most striking feature of the normal research problems we have just encountered is how little they aim to produce major novelties, conceptual or phenomenal. Sometimes, as in a wave-length measurement, everything but the most esoteric detail of the result is known in advance, and the typical latitude of expectation is only somewhat wider.

“History, if viewed as a repository for more than anecdote or chronology, could produce a decisive transformation in the image of science by which we are now possessed.”

He had a gift for aphorism; and his names have acquired an unusual status, for although they were once arcane, some of them are now part of colloquial English. Here is the sequence: (1) normal science (§§II–IV—he called these sections, not chapters, for he thought of Structure as more of a book outline than a book); (2) puzzle-solving (§IV); (3) pa

“To reject one paradigm without simultaneously substituting another is to reject science itself.” A crisis involves a period of extraordinary, rather than normal, research, with a “proliferation of competing articulations, the willingness to try anything, the expression of explicit discontent, the recourse to philosophy and to debate over fundament

Kuhn cannot take seriously that “there is some one full, objective, true account of nature.” Does this mean that he does not take truth seriously? Not at all. As he observed, he said nothing about truth in the book, except when quoting Bacon (169). Wise lovers of facts, who try to determine the truth about something, do not state a “theory of truth

The sciences progress by leaps and bounds. For many people, scientific advance is the very epitome of progress. If only political or moral life could be like that! Scientific knowledge is cumulative, building upon previous benchmarks

“The most striking feature of the normal research problems we have just encountered is how little they aim to produce major novelties, conceptual or phenomenal.” If you look at any research journal, he wrote, you will find three types of problems addressed: (1) determination of significant facts, (2) matching of facts with theory, and (3) articulat