The Resolution Of Revolutions Is Selection By

All Crises Begin With The Blurring Of A Paradigm And The Consequent Loosening Of The Rules For Normal Research. .. Or Finally, The Case That Will Most Concern Us Here, A Crisis May End With The Emergence Of A New Candidate For Paradigm And With The Ensuing Battle Over Its Acceptance.

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.

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 Existing Scientific Tradition.

Far From Being Magisterial In Its Objectivity, Science Was Conditioned By History, Society, And The Prejudices Of Scientists.

We May... Have To Relinquish The Notion, Explicit Or Implicit, That Changes Of Paradigm Carry Scientists And Those Who Learn From Them Closer And Closer To The Truth... The Developmental Process Described In This Essay Has Been A Process Of Evolution From Primitive Beginnings-a Process Whose Successive Stages Are Characterized By An Increasingly Detailed And Refined Understanding Of Nature. But Nothing That Has Been Or Will Be Said Makes It A Process Of Evolution Toward Anything.