A scientific community cannot practice its trade without some set of received beliefs. These beliefs form the foundation of the "educational initiation that prepares and licenses the student for professional practice". The nature of the "rigorous and rigid" preparation helps ensure that the received beliefs are firmly fixed in the student's mind. Scientists take great pains to defend the assumption that scientists know what the world is like...To this end, "normal science" will often suppress novelties which undermine its foundations. Research (...) is therefore not about discovering the unknown, but rather "a strenuous and devoted attempt to force nature into the conceptual boxes supplied by professional education". (shrink)

Thomas S. Kuhn's classic book is now available with a new index.

A provocative contribution to the new approach to the history and philosophy of science which emphasizes the role of radically new paradigms in scientific revolutions. While normal science proceeds as puzzle-solving within a relatively fixed paradigm, scientific crises lead to new paradigms where data, scientific problems, procedures, and standards for solutions are all altered. Scientific revolutions do not simply modify our understanding of a world which exists independently--they change the data and the world in which the scientist works. The essay (...) is filled with fascinating historical interpretations, though the analysis of the concept of a paradigm and scientific revolution is more suggestive than rigorous.--R. J. B. (shrink)