Central to Kuhn’s ideas is the vision of normal science as solving problems, the kinds of problems that students learn the first time they open their textbooks. Such problems define an accepted style of achievement that carries most scientists through graduate school, through their thesis work, and through the writing of journal articles that makes up the body of academic careers. “Under normal conditions the research scientist is not an innovator but a solver of puzzles, and the puzzles upon which he concentrates are just those which he believes can be both stated and solved within the
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