THE NATURE OF NORMAL SCIENCE
Thomas S. Kuhn

Outline and Study Guide
Prepared by Professor Frank Pajares, Emory University

Chapter III - The Nature of Normal Science.

If a paradigm consists of basic and incontrovertible assumptions about the nature of the discipline, what questions are left to ask?

1. When they first appear, paradigms are limited in scope and in precision.
2. "Paradigms gain their status because they are more successful than their competitors in solving a few problems that the group of practitioners has come to recognize as acute" (23).
   1. But more successful does not mean completely successful with a single problem or notably successful with any large number (23).
   2. Initially, a paradigm offers the promise of success.
   3. Normal science consists in the actualization of that promise. This is achieved by
      1. extending the knowledge of those facts that the paradigm displays as particularly revealing,
      2. increasing the extent of the match between those facts and the paradigm's predictions,
      3. and further articulation of the paradigm itself.
   4. In other words, there is a good deal of mopping-up to be done.
      1. Mop-up operations are what engage most scientists throughout their careers.
      2. Mopping-up is what normal science is all about!
      3. This paradigm-based research (25) is "an attempt to force nature into the preformed and relatively inflexible box that the paradigm supplies" (24).
         1. no effort made to call forth new sorts of phenomena.
         2. no effort to discover anomalies.
         3. when anomalies pop up, they are usually discarded or ignored.
         4. anomalies usually not even noticed (tunnel vision/one track mind).
         5. no effort to invent new theory (and no tolerance for those who try).
         6. "Normal-scientific research is directed to the articulation of those phenomena and theories that the paradigm already supplies" (24).
         7. "Perhaps these are defects . . . "
            1. ". . . but those restrictions, born from confidence in a paradigm, turn out to be essential to the development of science. By focusing attention on a small range of relatively esoteric problems, the paradigm forces scientists to investigate some part of nature in a detail and depth that would otherwise be unimaginable" (24).
            2. . . . and, when the paradigm ceases to function properly, scientists begin to behave differently and the nature of their research problems changes.
      4. Mopping-up can prove fascinating work (24). [You do it. We all do it. And we love to do it. In fact, we'd do it for free.]
3. The principal problems of normal science.
   1. Determination of significant fact.
      1. A paradigm guides and informs the fact-gathering (experiments and observations described in journals) decisions of researchers?
      2. Researchers focus on, and attempt to increase the accuracy and scope of, facts (constructs/concepts) that the paradigm has shown to be particularly revealing of the nature of things (25).
   2. Matching of facts with theory.
      1. Researchers focus on facts that can be compared directly with predictions from the paradigmatic theory (26)
      2. Great effort and ingenuity are required to bring theory and nature into closer and closer agreement.
      3. A paradigm sets the problems to be solved (27).
   3. Articulation of theory.
      1. Researchers undertake empirical work to articulate the paradigm theory itself (27)—resolve residual ambiguities, refine, permit solution of problems to which the theory had previously only drawn attention. This articulation includes
         1. determination of universal constants.
         2. development of quantitative laws.
         3. selection of ways to apply the paradigm to a related area of interest.
      2. This is, in part, a problem of application (but only in part).
      3. Paradigms must undergo reformulation so that their tenets closely correspond to the natural object of their inquiry (clarification by reformulation).
      4. "The problems of paradigm articulation are simultaneously theoretical and experimental" (33).
      5. Such work should produce new information and a more precise paradigm.
      6. This is the primary work of many sciences.
4. To desert the paradigm is to cease practicing the science it defines (34).