The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

by Thomas S. Kuhn

Kuhn’s thoughts were really quite shocking. Normal science is, he taught, just working away at a few puzzles that are left open in a current field of knowledge. Puzzle-solving makes us think of crossword puzzles, jigsaw puzzles, and sudoko, pleasant ways to keep busy when one is not up to useful work. Is normal science like that? A lot of scientific readers were a bit shocked, but then had to admit that is how it is in much of their daily work. Research problems do not aim to produce real novelty. A single sentence of page 35 sums up Kuhn’s doctrine: “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) articulation of theory. To expand slightly: 1.Theory leaves certain quantities or phenomena inadequately described and only qualitatively tells us what to expect. Measurement and other procedures determine the facts more precisely. 2.Known observations don’t quite tally with theory. What’s wrong? Tidy up the theory or show that the experimental data were defective. 3.The theory may have a solid mathematical formulation, but one is not yet able to comprehend its consequences. Kuhn gives the apt name of articulation to the process of bringing out what is implicit in the theory, often by mathema...