...AND THEN CUJO COMES AROUND THE CORNER...:

TSOSR contains an even more grim reality. While the Einsteins of the world smash existing paradigm models and revolutionize entire fields, most researchers are performing an important but different function. There are many, many phenomena and details that must be addressed, measured, and understood within the logic and rules of the dominant model. Decades of work follow to iron out all of the details of the new theory and how known observations fit within it. Most research is of this type: not reimagining the universe but combing its entire breadth for problems and phenomena to address inside the framework of the new paradigm. For some scientists, this is a depressing realization.

Astronomers working under the geocentric Ptolemiac framework calculated planetary orbits with a series of increasingly complex epicycles. These are motions in which bodies orbit one another using intricate patterns of circles about circles. This became increasingly complex and difficult. So, Kepler* exploded the field by proposing that all orbits are conic sections. Astronomers then inherited a vast new workload of discovering bodies and calculating orbits based not on epicycles but on ellipses, parabolas, and hyperbolas.

None of this superb theorizing would be convincing if it did not match up with the experience of a scientific researcher. Despite its academic tone, the observations and explanations offered by Kuhn ring true to someone who conducts experiments in the trenches for a living. Kuhn himself studied science as a student; perhaps this explains how penetratingly correct his observations are.

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