Their achievement was sufficiently unprecedented to attract an enduring group of adherents away from competing modes of scientific activity. Simultaneously, it was sufficiently open-ended to leave all sorts of problems for the redefined group of practitioners to resolve.
They were better able to cope with complexity and novelty. These new ideas were better adapted than older ideas/paradigms. It feels like there is a bit of natural selection at work here, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say that natural selection comes close to a process that guarantees a better outcome over time. But anyway, for the time being we are fortunate that natural selection (of ideas) has favored ones that are better adapted to accounting for
Alternatively, we may have a religious paradigm—Dawkins save us. A religious paradigm provides symbolic meaning. It provides us with meaningful comfort. It assigns purposes to all the gaps—a hallmark of a religious person is their capacity to answer everything with platitudes—, and it fills adherents with meaning (I.e. those willing to sacrifice access to ‘the unknown’ *cough exposure to truth cough*).
