Paradigms and Normal Science in Psychology

Abstract

Several writers have construed T. S. Kuhn's conception of science and methodology of scientific research' as though it were a template. They have looked at the match between what they perceive Kuhn's template as saying and what they perceive their scientific discipline to be. When their account of their science does not fit the pattern that they attribute to Kuhn, they conclude either that their science is not susceptible to a Kuhnian analysis because it is not a 'good' (i.e. normal or mature, etc.) science, or that Kuhn's account is wrong.2 In broad outline, the model of science that Kuhn proposed in I962 iS now familiar. This model rejects the (heretofore dominant) picture of science as a cumulative record of factual discoveries and theoretical generalizations based upon them in favour of a conception of mature science as a series of alternating periods of relatively continuous puzzle-solving research ('normal science'), on the one hand, and anomaly collection, which induces revolutionary reconceptualizations (rather than 'crises'), on the other.a But beyond this broad outline, there is evidence of considerable misunderstanding. Perhaps most misunderstanding is generated by Kuhn's conceptions of 'paradigms' and 'normnal science', and the relationships