The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

by Thomas S. Kuhn

Normal science does and must continually strive to bring theory and fact into closer agreement, and that activity can easily be seen as testing or as a search for confirmation or falsification. Instead, its object is to solve a puzzle for whose very existence the validity of the paradigm must be assumed. Failure to achieve a solution discredits only the scientist and not the theory. Here, even more than above, the proverb applies: “It is a poor carpenter who blames his tools.” In addition, the manner in which science pedagogy entangles discussion of a theory with remarks on its exemplary applications has helped to reinforce a confirmation-theory drawn predominantly from other sources. Given the slightest reason for doing so, the man who reads a science text can easily take the applications to be the evidence for the theory, the reasons why it ought to be believed. But science students accept theories on the authority of teacher and text, not because of evidence.