The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

by Thomas S. Kuhn

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 scope and precision with which the paradigm can be applied. That answer, however, cannot account for the enthusiasm and devotion that scientists display for the problems of normal research. No one devotes years to, say, the development of a better spectrometer or the production of an improved solution to the problem of vibrating strings simply because of the importance of the information that will be obtained. The data to be gained by computing ephemerides or by further measurements with an existing instrument are often just as significant, but those activities are regularly spurned by scientists because they are so largely repetitions of procedures that have been carried through before. That rejection provides a clue to the fascination of the normal research problem. Though its outcome can be anticipated, often in detail so great that what remains to be known is itself uninteresting, the way to achieve that outcome remains very much in doubt. Bringing a normal research problem to a conclusion is achieving the anticipated in a new way, and it requires the solution of all sorts of complex instrumental, conceptual, and mathematical puz...