The Route to Normal Science Thomas Kuhn The Route to Normal Science

“Normal Science” Based on one or more scientific achievements that a particular scientific community acknowledges as a foundation for further practice.

Textbooks Expound on this body of accepted theory Illustrate successful application Compare application with exemplary observations and experiments

Pre-Textbook The “classics” served a similar function Aristotle’s Physica Newton’s Principia Franklins’s Electricity

Classics Compelling (“attract an enduring group of adherents”) Scientific Writing: Compelling (“attract an enduring group of adherents”) +Open-ended (allow for further work to be done) Paradigm (closely related to normal science)

4 Step Illustration of the Paradigm Observations are made and facts regarding a phenomena are made, observations and facts are interpreted differently. A pre-paradigmatic school evolves. Eventually different schools of thought begin to emerge. These schools emphasize different facts. These schools compete to be the school of thought.

4 Step Illustration of the Paradigm 3. A Paradigm is then formed when the school of thought sufficiently answers more questions than the other schools of thought. By creating a work that attracts the students who will be the next generation of scientists/researchers, the other schools die out.

4 Step Illustration of the Paradigm 4. The paradigm is strengthened by the creation of scholarly journals, professional societies, textbooks, and by scholarly articles which use the jargon of the paradigm. lauracatch.wordpress.com

Maturity in the Scientific Field Being able to combine the paradigm with more esoteric research is a sign of “maturity” in the development of a scientific field.

Robert Oppenheimer

Isaac Newton Before Newton’s contributions to optics one could conclude that “though the field’s practitioners were scientists, the net result of their activity was something less than science”(13).

Crafts Medicine Calendar Making Metallurgy Esoteric data can be pulled from established crafts.

Crafts “Because the crafts are one readily accessible source of facts that could not have been casually discovered, technology has often played a vital role in the emergence of new sciences” (15-16).

Leyden Jar https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4k-z5O3Xk4A

Benjamin Franklin “To be accepted as a paradigm, a theory must seem better than its competitors, but it need not, and in fact never does, explain all the facts with which it can be confronted” (17-18).

The Gap An issue arising from the scientific foundations established in textbooks is the widening gap between the professional scientist and colleagues in other fields (21).

The Gap