“Normal Science”, or the regular indulgence of scientists in theorizing and experimenting within an established broad theory (without challenging its underlying assumptions) is how most science is conducted, hence “Normal Science” or “Mopping-up operations” (Kuhn, 4). But it so happens, that every once in a while, there is revolutionary or novel science, a science that disturbs the very foundations on which normal science is based, creating new “paradigms” (Kuhn, 2). A ‘paradigm’ should have the potential to attract a scientific group of individuals from their current activity while being “sufficiently open-ended” to the new group of practitioners to resolve all sorts of problems (Kuhn, 2). A successful paradigm is one that proves to have a better theory than that of its competitors, “but it need not, in fact never does, explain all the facts with which it can be confronted “(Kuhn, 3).
To understand this process of scientific change, Kuhn uses the result of various phases of paradigm change to highlight what history has to show. In a pre-paradigm phase, there are usually several theories that are competing to complete their version of the theory. Research under an already established paradigm leads to discovery, and “discovery commences with the awareness of an anomaly” (Kuhn, 9). While anomalies are usually resolved by ‘Normal Science’, they may sometimes break free to show that the “failure of existing rules is the prelude to search for new ones”, creating a crisis. In response to this crisis, underlying assumptions are reevaluated, and a novel theory will eventually develop creating a paradigm-shift. When a decision to accept a new paradigm is made, the old paradigm is rejected at that same moment (Kuhn, 11). Solving puzzles (or normal science) within this new paradigm will return in the post-paradigm phase. Normal science, however, when seen through the context of puzzle-solving, is cumulative or in other words, progressive, under the paradigm, but by no means does this reflect back on the overarching paradigm (Kuhn, 14).
One theory to which Kuhn replies directly is Karl Popper’s “Science as Falsification”, which says that “every genuine test of a theory is an attempt to falsify it” (Popper, 4) and if a theory cannot be tested then it does not have much value. According to Popper, “the scientific status of a theory is its falsifiability, or refutability, or testability” (Popper, 3) and through this, he is able to say that science seeks to disconfirm while pseudoscience seeks to confirm. It’s seen immediately that Kuhn’s account is quite different from that of Popper’s. Popper thought that science is “non-inductive and rational” while in Kuhn’s perceptive, “science is both non-inductive and non-rational” (Ladyman, 94). Through Popper, it is seen that normal science should aim to bring theory and fact closer together and to do that activity, “testing or a search for confirmation” must happen. According to Kuhn, the concept of falsifiability is not accommodative to the understanding of how and why science has developed as it has. Scientists will only consider the possibility that a theory has been falsified only when there is a viable new paradigm or alternative and if there are no contesters, scientists will just continue to perform normal science within the already established paradigm. Kuhn says that instead, the objective of normal science is to continue solving puzzles, “for whose very existence the validity of the paradigm must be assumed” (Kuhn, 12). Only when a paradigm shift has occurred, textbooks will account for the falsified theory that was previously in use. Popper shows the need that problems in science have to be immediately investigated and rejected (if falsified), Kuhn thinks that investigating every single anomaly in an established theory would be a waste of time and does not necessarily indicate any fundamental problem with the theory. Over time, the paradigm shift will become inevitable.
Paradigm shifts are important in their role of directing future research and resources. “The extraordinary episodes in which that shift of professional commitments occurs” is what Kuhn calls “scientific revolutions” (Kuhn, 2). In political situations, instability or “malfunction” leads the state of affairs into a crisis. This crisis is similar to the ones seen in science and is a necessary “prerequisite to revolution” (Kuhn, 13).
When a revolution occurs, the textbooks have to be rewritten. Kuhn says that this is why textbooks “disguise not only the role but the very existence of the revolutions that produced them” (Kuhn, 18). The center of all social and value-based structures in science is books. They inspire and account for knowledge that is usually passed down to future generations. Scientists and professors also gain their belief in a particular paradigm through these textbooks. Although under heavy resistance from the scientific community, revolutions will eventually cause the changes in scientific research that are conducted and there is a “shift in the criteria determining the legitimacy both of the problems and of proposed solutions” (Kuhn, 16). Not only does the new paradigm change the normal scientific tradition, but now the “scientist’s perception of his environment must be re-educated” (Kuhn, 16). This is why Kuhn calls science a “process of evolution from primitive beginnings” (Kuhn, 20). The overall change from one paradigm to another is best described by Lakatos as that which “cannot be governed by rules of reason: it falls totally within the realm of (social) psychology of discovery” (Ladyman, 105). I think, with all this into consideration, the view of science through a historical account definitely shows the reader that it is right to reject the traditional view of science as merely ‘progress towards an ideal’.
Although most of the piece shows the reader the structure of science as seen through history, a dark secret emerges from the last few paragraphs, a true philosophical takeaway. There is no real reason behind the progress of science or as Kuhn says, “nothing that has been said or will be said makes it a process of evolution towards anything”. This can be scary to readers who see science as the only enterprise “that draws constantly near some goal set by nature in advance” (Kuhn, 20). This to me sounds existential and in a way brings comfort in being okay with not knowing.
