Review

Hands down one of the most impactful books I’ve read. Science might just be the best system our species has produced, and this book will help you see it in a new light. The implications of this book are broader than author envisioned, I believe there are lessons in it for those studying technology adoption and change management.

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Key Takeaways

The 20% that gave me 80% of the value.

• Science presents itself as a constellation of facts, theories and methods each building on the last. Creating a growing stockpile of scientific technique and knowledge.
• Normal science is a slow and methodical exploration of the space. The community focus on normal problems that ought to be solvable by known rules and procedures. Everything is predicated on the assumption that the scientific community knows what the world is like.
• As anomalies accumulate so begins the extraordinary investigations that lead the profession at last to a new set of commitments. Scientific revolutions are tradition-shattering complements to the tradition-bound activity of normal science.
• Copernicus, Newton, Lavoisier, and Einstein all forced the community’s rejection of one honoured scientific theory in favour of another incompatible with it.
• Those scientists who contributed heavily to the old paradigm now have the most to lose.
• New discoveries then aren’t simply added to a body of work. Instead they cause a re-evaluation that alters foundational concepts, that can shift the perspective, and the history, of an entire scientific community.

• Normal science is research firmly based upon past scientific achievements that supply the foundation for further practice.
• These foundational insights are called paradigms: they need to attract scientists away from competing modes and be sufficiently open-ended to leave problems for practitioners to resolve.
• The study of the paradigm (in textbooks) is what prepares the student for membership to the scientific community.
• The successive transition from one paradigm to another via revolution is the usual developmental pattern of mature science.
• In the absence of a paradigm, all of the facts that could pertain to the development of a given science are likely to seem equally relevant. Early fact-gathering seems far more random and it produces a morass.
• A paradigm increases the effectiveness and efficiency of research.
• A new paradigm implies a new and more rigid definition of the field. Those unwilling or unable to accommodate their work to it must proceed in isolation or attach themselves to some other group.
• When a scientist can take a paradigm for granted, they don’t have to start from scratch. They can pick up a textbook and begin their research where it leaves off. That changes the nature of the work to be more subtle and esoteric. Typically work is addressed to only professional colleagues of that shared paradigm, requiring translation for the layman.
• A widening gulf separates the professional scientists from other fields, but the mechanism is intrinsic to scientific advance.
• Achieving a paradigm that guides the whole group’s research is almost the definition of ‘a field a science.’

• Paradigms gain their status because they are more successful than their competitors in solving the important problems recognised by the group.
• The paradigm represents work that has been done once and for all.
• Confidence in the paradigm, restricts research and focuses attention on a small range of relatively esoteric problems.
• The overwhelming majority of the problems undertaken by even the very best scientists usually fall into one of these three: determination of significant fact, matching of facts with theory and articulation of theory.

• Normal research problems don’t aim to produce major novelties. Much of the result is known in advance. They retain their significance to scientists because they add to the scope and precision of the paradigm.
• The scientific community of a paradigm chooses problems that can be assumed to have solutions.
• These conceptual, theoretical, instrumental, and methodological commitments relate normal science to puzzle-solving. The rules allow the practitioner to concentrate on esoteric problems, challenged by how to bring the puzzle to a resolution.

• Members of the community learn their trade by studying and practicing the accepted rules of the paradigm.
• Debates over legitimate methods, problems, and standards of solution spike before and during scientific revolutions when paradigms are under attack and subject to change.

• Discoveries begin with an awareness of an anomaly; when nature violates the paradigms expectations. They continue with extended exploration of the area. They close only when the paradigm theory has been adjusted so that the anomalous has become the expected.
• Discovery takes time as it requires the observations to be assimilated into theory. The consequent change of paradigm categories and procedures is often accompanied by resistance. The fact is only seen as scientific after the adjustment of the theory.
• The discovery is completed when the theory is adjusted to expect the anomaly.
• Despite the fact that normal science is not directed at novelty (it initially tends to suppress it) it nevertheless is effective in causing them to arise.
• The first paradigm typically accounts quite successfully for most of the observations and accessible experiments. Further development calls for construction of more elaborate equipment, vocabulary and skills. Professionalisation of this kind leads to a restriction of the scientist’s vision and to resistance to paradigm change.
• Professionalisation makes science increasingly rigid, but funnels attention such that observation-theory match achieves great precision.
• The more precise a paradigm is, the more sensitive an indicator it provides of anomaly and therefore a paradigm change.

• Once a discovery had been assimilated scientists should able to account for a wider range of natural phenomena at greater precision.
• Gains are only achieved by discarding previous beliefs and by replacing components of the previous paradigm.
• Emergence of new theories sparks a period of professional insecurity with the persistent failure of the puzzles of normal science to come out as they should. Failure of existing rules is the prelude to a search for new ones.
• The novel theory seems a direct response to crisis.
• In the absence of crisis, better solutions have been ignored. You need to make contact with a troubled spot of an existing paradigm.
• Retooling is an extravagance to be reserved for the occasion that demands it.

• A scientific theory is only declared invalid if an alternate candidate is available to take its place. The decision to reject one paradigm is to simultaneously accept another.
• Defenders of a theory will devise many articulations and ad hoc modifications in order to eliminate any apparent conflict caused by anomaly.
• Normal science continually strives to bring theory and fact closer, it’s the search for confirmation or falsification.
• Science students accept theories on the authority of teacher and text, not because of evidence.
• If an anomaly is to evoke crisis, it must usually be more than just an anomaly.
• An anomaly can cause a transition from normal science to crisis to extraordinary science. More and more attention is devoted to the anomaly, creating a focal points for scientific scrutiny. Soon scientists view its resolution as the subject matter of their discipline.
• Einstein on paradigm change
• Crisis begin with the blurring of a paradigm and the consequent loosening of the rules for normal research. Research during crisis resembles research during the pre-paradigm period.
• A crisis in science can be resolved either by the existing paradigm proving capable of handling the problem, by the problem being set aside for future generations with more advanced tools, or by the emergence of a new paradigm that sparks a battle over its acceptance.
• The transition from an old paradigm to a new one involves a fundamental reconstruction of the field, changing its theoretical foundations, methods, and applications, rather than a cumulative process of extending the old paradigm. It is usually achieved by young scientists or those new to the field, as they are less committed to the traditional rules and more likely to conceive of a new set of rules to replace them.

• Scientific revolutions, like political revolutions, occur when existing institutions or paradigms fail to adequately address new problems, leading to a crisis. Society divides into competing camps supporting either the old or new paradigm.
• Proponents of each paradigm use their own framework to argue its defence, and while persuasive, these arguments alone cannot conclusively settle the debate. The choice between paradigms is also a choice between incompatible modes of community life.
• Textbooks obscure the fact that during revolutions, the entire network of fact and theory shifts. They can do so because they are rewritten each time.
• Theories do not evolve piecemeal to fit pre-existing facts; instead, they emerge together with the facts from a revolutionary reformulation of the preceding scientific tradition.
• New paradigms emerge in the minds of a few individuals, usually young or new to the field, who are less committed to the old paradigm and have focused intensely on the crisis-provoking problems.
• Paradigm testing involves competition between rival paradigms for the allegiance of the scientific community. New paradigms incorporate much of the old paradigm's vocabulary and apparatus but often use them differently. Proponents of different paradigms practice their trades in different worlds, seeing different things and relationships.
• The transition between paradigms cannot be made gradually or forced by logic and neutral experience; it must occur all at once, like a gestalt switch. Resistance is inevitable, and paradigm change cannot be justified by proof, but arguments can still persuade scientists to change their minds.

Deep Summary

Longer form notes, typically condensed, reworded and de-duplicated.

Great books are rare. This is one. Read it and you will see….. because ‘Structure’ is a great book, it can be read in endless ways and put to many uses.

Chapter 1: Introduction: A Role for History

• Science presents itself as a constellation of facts, theories and methods each building on the last. Creating a growing stockpile of scientific technique and knowledge. BUT that doesn’t account for the jumble of errors, myth, and out-of-date theories that have been discarded along the way. Take those into account and science doesn’t seem like a process of accretion at all.
• Observation and experimentation have never been enough to achieve consensus and support from scientific communities. At a given time their is always a belief system, with which new proposals have to interact.
• Effective research requires a scientific community to build a foundation on which to stand. That foundational knowledge prepares students for professional practice. That education exerts a deep hold on the scientific mind.
• Normal science is a slow and methodical exploration of the space. The community focus on normal problems that ought to be solvable by known rules and procedures. Everything is predicated on the assumption that the scientific community knows what the world is like.
• On occasion a piece of equipment conceived for the purpose of normal research fails to perform in the anticipated manner… an anomalous result is found that refuses to align with professional expectation.
• As anomalies accumulate so begins the extraordinary investigations that lead the profession at last to a new set of commitments. Scientific revolutions are tradition-shattering complements to the tradition-bound activity of normal science.
• Copernicus, Newton, Lavoisier, and Einstein all forced the community’s rejection of one honoured scientific theory in favour of another incompatible with it.
• Those scientists who contributed heavily to the old paradigm now have the most to lose.

Maxwell’s equations were as revolutionary as Einstein’s, and they were resisted accordingly. The invention of other new theories regularly, and appropriately, evokes the same response from some of the specialists on whose area of special competence they impinge. For these men the new theory implies a change in the rules governing the prior practice of normal science. Inevitably, therefore, it reflects upon much scientific work they have already successfully completed. That is why a new theory, however special its range of application, is seldom or never just an increment to what is already known. Its assimilation requires the reconstruction of prior theory and the re-evaluation of prior fact, an intrinsically revolutionary process that is seldom completed by a single man and never overnight.

• New discoveries then, aren’t simply added to a body of work. Instead they cause a re-evaluation that alters foundational concepts, that can shift the perspective, and the history, of an entire scientific community.

Chapter 2: The Route to Normal Science

• Normal science is research firmly based upon past scientific achievements that supply the foundation for further practice.
• These foundational insights are called paradigms: they need to attract scientists away from competing modes and be sufficiently open-ended to leave problems for practitioners to resolve.
• The study of the paradigm (in textbooks) is what prepares the student for membership to the scientific community. A community working from a shared paradigm with the same rules and standards for scientific practice is a prerequisite for normal science.
• The acquisition of a paradigm is a sign of maturity in the development of any given scientific field.
• The successive transition from one paradigm to another via revolution is the usual developmental pattern of mature science.
• In the first half of the eighteenth century there were almost as many views about the nature of electricity as there were important electrical experimenters. This is what science looks like before it acquires its first universally received paradigm. Franklin devised a single theory that united the next generation of “electricians” with a common paradigm for its research.

History suggests that the road to a firm research consensus is extraordinarily arduous.

• In the absence of a paradigm, all of the facts that could pertain to the development of a given science are likely to seem equally relevant. Early fact-gathering seems far more random and it produces a morass. Only very occasionally do facts collected with little guidance give clarity to permit the emergence of a first paradigm.
• No natural history can be interpreted in the absence of at least some implicit body of intertwined theoretical and methodological belief that permits selection, evaluation, and criticism.

To be accepted as a paradigm, a theory must seem better than its competitors, but it need not, and in fact never does, explain all the facts with which it can be confronted.

• A paradigm helps suggest which experiments are worth performing, ending the constant debate over fundamentals. Scientists are encouraged to undertake more precise, esoteric, and consuming sorts of work, as they feel they’re on the right track.
• A paradigm increases the effectiveness and efficiency of research.

Truth emerges more readily from error than from confusion. Francis Bacon

• A new paradigm implies a new and more rigid definition of the field. Those unwilling or unable to accommodate their work to it must proceed in isolation or attach themselves to some other group.
• When a scientist can take a paradigm for granted, they don’t have to start from scratch. They can pick up a textbook and begin their research where it leaves off. That changes the nature of the work to be more subtle and esoteric. Typically work is addressed to only professional colleagues of that shared paradigm, requiring translation for the layman.
• A widening gulf separates the professional scientists from other fields, but the mechanism is intrinsic to scientific advance.
• Achieving a paradigm that guides the whole group’s research is almost the definition of ‘a field a science.’

Chapter 3: The Nature of Normal Science

• Paradigms gain their status because they are more successful than their competitors in solving the important problems recognised by the group.
• The paradigm represents work that has been done once and for all.
• Much of science is mop-up work. A paradigm is a promise of future success. Normal science realises that promise by extending the extent of the match between the paradigm’s predictions and observation.
• The aim of normal science is not to identify new phenomena; or to invent new theories. It is directed to the articulation of those phenomena and theories that the paradigm already supplies.
• Confidence in the paradigm, restricts research and focuses attention on a small range of relatively esoteric problems. This restriction is essential to the development of science.
• A paradigm seems to reveal the nature of things. Natural science takes the theory and uses it to solve problems with more precision and in a larger variety of situations.
• Some efforts will also be made to better articulate a paradigm. Like the determination of universal constants, or quantitative laws (e.g. Joules).
• The overwhelming majority of the problems undertaken by even the very best scientists usually fall into one of these three: determination of significant fact, matching of facts with theory and articulation of theory.

Chapter 4: Normal Science as Puzzle-solving

• Normal research problems don’t aim to produce major novelties. Much of the result is known in advance. They retain their significance to scientists because they add to the scope and precision of the paradigm.
• Even though much of the outcome can be anticipated, the way to achieve that outcome (the method) remains in doubt, requiring the solution of all sorts of complex instrumental, conceptual, and mathematical puzzles. Those who succeed prove themselves to be expert puzzle-solvers, the challenge of the puzzle is an important motivation.
• Though intrinsic value is no criterion for a puzzle, the assured existence of a solution is.
• The scientific community of a paradigm chooses problems that can be assumed to have solutions. These are the only problems that the community will admit as scientific or encourage its members to undertake. Other problems are seen as just too problematic to be worth the time.
• This can insulate the community from important problems that are not reducible to the puzzle form.
• Science progresses so rapidly because its practitioners concentrate on problems that only their own lack of ingenuity can keep them from solving.
• Many of the greatest scientific minds have devoted all of their professional attention to demanding puzzles of this sort.
• A puzzle is characterised by having an assured solutions and rules that limit the nature of acceptable solutions and the steps by which they are to be obtained.
• Scientists need to be motivated by extending the precision and scope with which we see the world. If that scrutiny highlights apparent disorder, they are challenged refine observational techniques or to a further articulation of his theories.
• These conceptual, theoretical, instrumental, and methodological commitments relate normal science to puzzle-solving. The rules allow the practitioner to concentrate on esoteric problems, challenged by how to bring the puzzle to a resolution.

Chapter 5: The Priority of Paradigms

• Members of the community learn their trade by studying and practicing the accepted rules of the paradigm.
• The search for a body of rules to define the common ground of a paradigm is a continual deep frustration..
• Debates over legitimate methods, problems, and standards of solution serve to define paradigms. Debates are uncommon in periods of normal science. They spike just before and during scientific revolutions, when paradigms are under attack and subject to change.
• This makes normal science sound rigid, but it’s possible two scientists in closely related fields to share the same education and adopt different paradigms.

Chapter 6: Anomaly and the Emergence of Scientific Discoveries

• Normal science and puzzle-solving is a highly cumulative enterprise. Success is the steady extension of the scope and precision of scientific knowledge. It doesn’t aim at novelties of fact or theory and, when successful, finds none.

New and unsuspected phenomena are, however, repeatedly uncovered by scientific research, and radical new theories have again and again been invented by scientists.

• Discoveries begin with an awareness of an anomaly; when nature violates the paradigms expectations. They continue with extended exploration of the area. They close only when the paradigm theory has been adjusted so that the anomalous has become the expected.
• Discovery takes time as it requires the observations to be assimilated into theory. The consequent change of paradigm categories and procedures is often accompanied by resistance. The fact is only seen as scientific after the adjustment of the theory.

Novelty emerges only with difficulty, manifested by resistance, against a background provided by expectation.

• The discovery is completed when the theory is adjusted to expect the anomaly.
• Despite the fact that normal science is not directed at novelty (it initially tends to suppress it) it nevertheless is effective in causing them to arise.
• The first paradigm typically accounts quite successfully for most of the observations and accessible experiments. Further development calls for construction of more elaborate equipment, vocabulary and skills. Professionalisation of this kind leads to a restriction of the scientist’s vision and to resistance to paradigm change.
• Professionalisation makes science increasingly rigid, but funnels attention such that observation-theory match achieves great precision.
• Often special apparatus constructed for anticipated functions is what ultimately leads to novelty.

Novelty ordinarily emerges only for the man who, knowing with precision what he should expect, is able to recognise that something has gone wrong. Anomaly appears only against the background provided by the paradigm.

• The more precise a paradigm is, the more sensitive an indicator it provides of anomaly and therefore a paradigm change.

Chapter 7: Crisis and the Emergence of Scientific Theories

• Once a discovery had been assimilated scientists should able to account for a wider range of natural phenomena at greater precision.
• Gains are only achieved by discarding previous beliefs and by replacing components of the previous paradigm.
• In many cases the awareness of anomaly had been going on so long and gone so deep that that the fields affected are in a state of growing crisis.
• Emergence of new theories sparks a period of professional insecurity with the persistent failure of the puzzles of normal science to come out as they should. Failure of existing rules is the prelude to a search for new ones.

By the early sixteenth century an increasing number of Europe’s best astronomers were recognising that the astronomical paradigm was failing in application to its own traditional problems. That recognition was prerequisite to Copernicus’ rejection of the Ptolemaic paradigm and his search for a new one.

The novel theory seems a direct response to crisis.

• In the absence of crisis, better solutions have been ignored. You need to make contact with a troubled spot of an existing paradigm.

Ptolemaic astronomy had failed to solve its problems; the time had come to give a competitor a chance.

• Retooling is an extravagance to be reserved for the occasion that demands it, periods of significant crises give motivation to build better instruments.

Chapter 8: The Response to Crisis

• A scientific theory is only declared invalid if an alternate candidate is available to take its place. The decision to reject one paradigm is to simultaneously accept another.
• Both paradigms need to be compared with nature and with each other.
• Defenders of a theory will devise many articulations and ad hoc modifications in order to eliminate any apparent conflict caused by anomaly.
• Failure to achieve a solution discredits only the scientist and not the theory.
• Normal science continually strives to bring theory and fact closer, it’s the search for confirmation or falsification.
• Science students accept theories on the authority of teacher and text, not because of evidence.
• If an anomaly is to evoke crisis, it must usually be more than just an anomaly.
• There are always difficulties somewhere in the paradigm-nature fit.
• An anomaly can cause a transition from normal science to crisis to extraordinary science. More and more attention is devoted to the anomaly, creating a focal points for scientific scrutiny. Soon scientists view its resolution as the subject matter of their discipline.
• Early attacks on the anomaly follow paradigm rules closely, but should it resist minor or major changes of the paradigm can occur.

“It was as if the ground had been pulled out from under one, with no firm foundation to be seen anywhere, upon which one could have built.” Einstein on paradigm change

• Crisis begin with the blurring of a paradigm and the consequent loosening of the rules for normal research. Research during crisis resembles research during the pre-paradigm period.
• A crisis in science can be resolved either by the existing paradigm proving capable of handling the problem, by the problem being set aside for future generations with more advanced tools, or by the emergence of a new paradigm that sparks a battle over its acceptance.
• The transition from an old paradigm to a new one involves a fundamental reconstruction of the field, changing its theoretical foundations, methods, and applications, rather than a cumulative process of extending the old paradigm.
• During the transition, there will be significant overlap in the problems solvable by the old and new paradigms, but the methods of solution will differ, and once complete, the field's view, methods, and goals will have changed.
• A new paradigm often emerges before a crisis is fully developed or recognised.
• During a crisis, scientists often engage in seemingly random experiments and generate speculative theories, as exemplified by Kepler's work on Mars and Priestley's research on gases. This process loosens existing stereotypes and provides data necessary for a paradigm shift, which is usually achieved by young scientists or those new to the field, as they are less committed to the traditional rules and more likely to conceive of a new set of rules to replace them.

Chapter 9: The Nature and Necessity of Scientific Revolutions

• Scientific revolutions, like political revolutions, occur when existing institutions or paradigms fail to adequately address new problems, leading to a crisis. In both cases, the crisis causes individuals to become estranged from the current system and propose new frameworks. Society then divides into competing camps supporting either the old or new paradigm.

Political revolutions aim to change political institutions in ways that those institutions themselves prohibit. Their success therefore necessitates the partial relinquishment of one set of institutions in favor of another, and in the interim, society is not fully governed by institutions at all.

• Proponents of each paradigm use their own framework to argue its defence, and while persuasive, these arguments alone cannot conclusively settle the debate. The choice between paradigms is also a choice between incompatible modes of community life.
• Cumulative acquisition of novelty is rare and improbable because normal research selects problems that can be solved using existing techniques. Saving theories by restricting their range prohibits scientists from speaking "scientifically" about unobserved phenomena.
• Commitment to a paradigm is necessary for normal science and must extend beyond existing precedents. Successive paradigms have necessary and irreconcilable differences, leading to shifts in problem and solution legitimacy criteria. As a result, competing schools inevitably talk past each other when debating their paradigms' merits.

Chapter 11: The Invisibility of Revolutions

• Revolutions in science are often nearly invisible because the authoritative sources that shape our image of scientific activity, principally textbooks and popular works, systematically disguise their existence and significance for important functional reasons.
• Textbooks address the current paradigms and normal-scientific tradition, recording the stable outcomes of past revolutions. They have to be rewritten after each revolution, inevitably disguising the role and existence of the revolutions that produced them.

Textbooks, however, being pedagogic vehicles for the perpetuation of normal science, have to be rewritten in whole or in part whenever the language, problem-structure, or standards of normal science change. In short, they have to be rewritten in the aftermath of each scientific revolution, and, once rewritten, they inevitably disguise not only the role but the very existence of the revolutions that produced them.

• These texts create a sense of participation in a long-standing historical tradition, implicitly representing earlier scientists as having worked on the same problems and canons as the most recent scientific revolution. This makes science seem largely cumulative.
• Scientists preserve the names of their heroes but often forget or revise their works. Textbooks treat various aspects of current normal science separately and sequentially, obscuring the fact that during revolutions, the entire network of fact and theory shifts.
• Theories do not evolve piecemeal to fit pre-existing facts; instead, they emerge together with the facts from a revolutionary reformulation of the preceding scientific tradition, within which the relationship between the scientist and nature was different.

Chapter 12: The Resolution of Revolutions

• New paradigms emerge in the minds of a few individuals, usually young or new to the field, who are less committed to the old paradigm and have focused intensely on the crisis-provoking problems. Paradigm-testing occurs only after persistent failure to solve a noteworthy puzzle has led to a crisis and an alternate candidate paradigm has emerged.

Invariably their attention has been intensely concentrated upon the crisis-provoking problems; usually, in addition, they are men so young or so new to the crisis-ridden field that practice has committed them less deeply than most of their contemporaries to the world view and rules determined by the old paradigm.

• Testing involves competition between rival paradigms for the allegiance of the scientific community. New paradigms incorporate much of the old paradigm's vocabulary and apparatus but often use them differently, leading to misunderstanding between competing schools. Proponents of different paradigms practice their trades in different worlds, seeing different things and relationships.
• The transition between paradigms cannot be made gradually or forced by logic and neutral experience; it must occur all at once, like a gestalt switch. Resistance is inevitable, and paradigm change cannot be justified by proof, but arguments can still persuade scientists to change their minds.
• Proponents of a new paradigm often claim to solve the problems that led the old paradigm into crisis, which can be particularly effective if the new paradigm displays superior quantitative precision. Aesthetic considerations, such as a theory being "neater" or "simpler," can also lead scientists to reject an old paradigm.

Noting that no theory can ever be exposed to all possible relevant tests, they ask not whether a theory has been verified but rather about its probability in the light of the evidence that actually exists.

• Embracing a new paradigm early often requires defying evidence and having faith that it will succeed where the older paradigm has failed. As competent supporters improve and explore the new paradigm, the number and strength of persuasive arguments in its favour increase, gradually converting more scientists until only a few elderly holdouts remain.

Although I am fully convinced of the truth of the views given in this volume . . . , I by no means expect to convince experienced naturalists whose minds are stocked with a multitude of facts all viewed, during a long course of years, from a point of view directly opposite to mine. . . . [B]ut I look with confidence to the future,—to young and rising naturalists, who will be able to view both sides of the question with impartiality. Darwin on the Origin of Species

Gradually the number of experiments, instruments, articles, and books based upon the paradigm will multiply. Still more men, convinced of the new view’s fruitfulness, will adopt the new mode of practicing normal science, until at last only a few elderly hold-outs remain.

Chapter 13: Progress through Revolutions

• During periods of normal science, progress seems obvious and assured. The scientific community can focus on the most esoteric phenomena, and individual creative work is exclusively evaluated by other professionals. Textbooks are relied upon heavily in scientific education, which may not be well-designed to produce scientists who easily discover fresh approaches.
• A scientific community is an efficient instrument for solving problems defined by its paradigms, and solving these problems inevitably leads to progress. When a paradigm is rejected, the community renounces most of the literature embodying that paradigm, distorting the perception of the discipline's past.
• The existence of science depends on vesting the power to choose between paradigms in a special kind of community. Scientists must be concerned with solving detailed problems about nature's behaviour, and their solutions must be accepted by many.
• The scientific community is supremely efficient at maximising the number and precision of problems solved through paradigm change. Scientists are reluctant to embrace a new paradigm unless it resolves an outstanding recognised problem and preserves a large part of the concrete problem-solving ability accrued through its predecessors.
• Science may grow in depth but not necessarily in breadth, with breadth manifested mainly in the proliferation of specialties. The nature of scientific communities guarantees that the list of problems solved and the precision of individual problem-solutions will continue to grow.
• Darwin's theory of evolution encountered resistance, particularly from religious groups, but the greatest difficulty was the abolition of the teleological kind of evolution. Natural selection, operating with actual organisms in a given environment, was responsible for the gradual emergence of more specialized organisms without a set goal.
• This evolutionary view of science suggests that scientific knowledge develops without a fixed scientific truth or goal, with each stage being a better exemplar of the process.