Response to Crisis

"What has just been said indicates that even a discrepancy unaccountably larger than that experienced in other applications of the theory need not draw any profound response. There are always some discrepancies....[P]ersistent and recognized anomaly does not always induce crisis....They could be recognized as counterinstances and still be set aside for later work. "It follows that if an anomaly is to evoke crisis, it must be more than just an anomaly. There are always difficulties somewhere in the paradigm-nature fit; most of them are set right sooner or later, often by processes that could not have been foreseen. The scientist who pauses to examine every anomaly he notes will seldom get significant work done. We therefore have to ask what it is that makes an anomaly seem worth concerted scrutiny, and to that question there is no fully general answer....Sometimes an anomaly will clearly call into question explicit and fundamental generalizations of the paradigm...Or, ....an anomaly without apparent fundamental import may evoke crisis if the applications that it inhibits have a particular practical importance....Or,....the development of normal science may transform an anomaly that had only previously been a vexation into a source of crisis..." p.81-82, "The Response to Crisis," THE STRUCTURE OF SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTIONS, by Thomas S. Kuhn (U. of Chicago Press, 2012)