Some of the most significant advances in science come on the heels of bright minds observing all the same things, with all the same tools, for years and years before someone with fresh eyes comes with a breakthrough. Thomas Kuhn, the influential philosopher and scientific historian explores this phenomenon in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. These breakthrough moments, he concludes, represent a “paradigm shift” where “Scientists see new and different things when looking with familiar instruments in places they have looked before.”
