It might be useful to distinguish two broad kinds of problems in science. The first kind—call it the “eye in the sandstorm” problem—arises when there’s such immense confusion in a field that no pattern or road map is visible. There’s sand in the air everywhere you look, and a completely new pathway of thinking is needed. Quantum theory serves as a good example. In the early 1900s, as the atomic and subatomic worlds were discovered, the heuristic principles of Newtonian physics just would not suffice, and a shifted paradigm about this atomic/subatomic world was required to get out of the
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