Normal Science Does Not Aim At Novelties

Probably, The Single Most Prevalent Claim Advanced By The Proponents Of A New Paradigm Is That They Can Solve The Problems That Led The Old One To A Crisis.

Later Scientific Theories Are Better Than Earlier Ones For Solving Puzzles In The Often Quite Different Environments To Which They Are Applied. That Is Not A Relativist's Position, And It Displays The Sense In Which I Am A Convinced Believer In Scientific Progress.

Research Under A Paradigm Must Be A Particularly Effective Way Of Inducing Paradigm Change.

Normal Science, The Activity In Which Most Scientists Inevitably Spend Most All Their Time, Is Predicated On The Assumption That The Scientific Community Knows What The World Is Like. Normal Science Often Suppresses Fundamental Novelties Because They Are Necessarily Subversive Of Its Basic Commitments.

The Historian Of Science May Be Tempted To Claim That When Paradigms Change, The World Itself Changes With Them. Led By A New Paradigm, Scientists Adopt New Instruments And Look In New Places. Even More Important, During Revolutions, Scientists See New And Different Things When Looking With Familiar Instruments In Places They Have Looked Before. It Is Rather As If The Professional Community Had Been Suddenly Transported To Another Planet Where Familiar Objects Are Seen In A Different Light And Are Joined By Unfamiliar Ones As Well.