Kuhn posits that scientific innovation progresses through revolutions, or “paradigm shifts.” In this framework, the steady and continuous process of scientific development—that is, normal science—is sporadically disrupted by scientific revolutions. These are catalyzed by the emergence of “anomalies,” which are incompatible with the existing paradigm that dominates normal science. A scientific revolution follows a crisis when a novel paradigm, which is “incommensurable” with the practice of normal science, supersedes the previous paradigm.
