In chapter 3 of his famous book denominated, “The Nature of Normal
Science,” Thomas S. Kuhn states:
“What then is the nature of the more professional and esoteric
research that a group's single paradigm permits? If the paradigm
represents work that has been done once and for all, what further
problems does it leave the united group to resolve? Those questions
will seem even more urgent if we now note one respect in which the
terms used so far may be misleading. In its established usage a
paradigm is an accepted model or pattern, and that aspect of its
meaning has enabled me, lacking a better word, to appropriate
'paradigm' here....
“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. To be more successful
is not, however, either to be completely successful with a single
problem or notably successful with any large number. The success of a
paradigm—whether Aristotle's analysis of motion, Ptolemy's
computations of planetary motions, Lavoisier's application of the
balance, or Maxwell's mathematization of the electromagnetic field—is
at the start largely a promise of success discoverable in selected
and still incomplete examples. Normal science consists in the
actualization of that promise, an actualization achieved by extending
the knowledge of those facts that the paradigm displays as
particularly revealing, by increasing the extent of the match between
those facts and the paradigm's predictions, and by further
articulation of the paradigm itself.
“No part of the aim of normal science is to call forth new sorts of
phenomena; indeed those that will not fit the box are often not seen
at all. Nor do scientists normally aim to invent new theories, and
they are often intolerant of those invented by others. Instead,
normal-scientific research is directed to the articulation of those
phenomena and theories that the paradigm already supplies.” – THE
STRUCTURE OF SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTIONS, “The Nature of Normal
Science,” by Thomas S. Kuhn (University of Chicago: 2012), pp.
23-24.
