By Brendan D. Murphy
Guest Writer for Wake Up World
“In a time of drastic change, it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.” ~ Eric Hoffer
Kuhn states in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions that the actualization of a scientific paradigm is achieved by increasing the extent of the match between its facts and its predictions, and by further articulation of the paradigm itself: “mop-up work.” Kuhn’s candor is enlightening, as he explains that such work occupies most scientists right through their careers; it is “normal science,” an enterprise attempting to force-fit nature into the preformed conceptual boxes supplied by the already existing paradigm (the Big Bang theory comes to mind). New sorts of phenomena are not sought, and those phenomena that won’t be squeezed into pre-existing boxes tend to not even be seen at all. Scientists generally don’t seek to invent new theories, and they don’t always tolerate the theories of other scientists.
