Science doesn't progress smoothly—it shatters and resets
We often imagine science as a steady, upward climb toward absolute truth, with each generation adding bricks to a shared tower. In 1962, historian and philosopher Thomas Kuhn argued science actually advances through disruptive revolutions. During quiet eras of "normal science," researchers solve puzzles inside an accepted framework. But when unexplained anomalies pile up, the entire framework shatters in a paradigm shift—forcing scientists to adopt a new worldview that cannot even be directly compared to the old one.
The Illusion of Cumulative Progress
Before the middle of the twentieth century, most philosophers and working researchers viewed scientific history as a steady, cumulative march. In this standard picture, science advanced by incrementally gathering observations, verifying hypotheses, and cataloging universal facts. Each successive generation was thought to stand upon the shoulders of the last, adding new layers of mortar to an ever-expanding store of reliable knowledge. Older ideas were treated as primitive stepping stones, while abandoned beliefs were dismissed as errors that had simply been corrected by better instruments and sharper logic.
This view owed much to logical empiricism and textbook traditions that organized scientific history as a neat, linear narrative. By presenting the past in terms of present understanding, educational textbooks systematically hid the messy contingencies, conceptual ruptures, and intense sociological battles that accompanied major discoveries. Science was widely celebrated as the supreme engine of human rationality, distinguished from all other fields by its orderly accumulation of objective facts about the natural world.
In 1962, a physicist-turned-historian named Thomas Kuhn disrupted this consensus with the publication of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Drawing on detailed case studies from the history of astronomy, physics, and chemistry, Kuhn demonstrated that the historical record does not show smooth continuity. Instead, science is characterized by prolonged periods of conservative adherence to accepted models, punctuated by sudden and disruptive structural transformations.