6 - Research as a paradigm-directed activity

Summary

The proposition

Kuhn maintains that the chief characteristics of normal science are that research is guided by the dominant paradigm and that research is seen as a puzzle-solving activity (Kuhn 1970a: ch. 4). In normal science, the scientist's primary role is to develop hypotheses to explain puzzles that the paradigm has focused upon. One of the significant characteristics of this research, according to Kuhn (1970a: 146–148), is that the paradigm's failure to resolve puzzles does not lead to the falsification of the entire paradigm, but to incremental changes known as paradigm articulation. Persistent failure to resolve puzzles is not seen as a flaw in the paradigm but as a flaw in the individual scientist (Kuhn 1970a: 35–36). Thus, while Karl Popper's (1959) notion of falsification may be applied to individual hypotheses and even to theories, it is never applied to the most fundamental assumptions of the field, that is, the paradigm (Kuhn 1970a: 146–148). Hypothesis testing in normal science tends to be a process of testing competing hypotheses “derived” from the same paradigm rather than testing hypotheses derived from competing paradigms (Kuhn 1970a: 24). The latter, if it occurs at all in science, occurs during periods of scientific revolution and is then viewed as more of a change of world view than of testing hypotheses from competing paradigms. (Kuhn 1970a: ch. 10).