a role for history. Kuhn asserts that the reigning paradigm, as encapsulated in textbooks especially, is misleading and leads people to believe that the laws of science have been developing and progressing toward the truth, as contemporarily known. In doing so, he reveals that past scientific theories have been discarded as "unscientific," in essence swept under the carpet. Yet, Kuhn claims scientists should not ignore out-dated theories, for they are part of the tapestry of scientific history. He challenges students to take a fresh look at old theories and find what they may still have to offer.
             In the next portion of Structure, Kuhn defines many of his key terms, such as paradigm. A paradigm is a manner of worldview but something more. For a science, it contains all of the laws, beliefs, procedures, and methods upon which that science is based. Kuhn states that a paradigm has two essential characteristics, that its "achievement was sufficiently unprecedented to attract an enduring group of adherents" away from a competing mode and that "it was sufficiently open-ended to leave all sorts of problems for the redefined group of practitioners to resolve" (Kuhn, 1996, p. 10). Within this criteria Kuhn reveals the route, or pattern, of a mature science. After a science emerges from the immature, pre-paradigm phase, it will continually undergo successive periods of normal science and revolutionary science. Normal science is the general, day-to-day practice of the discipline. Kuhn likens it to puzzle solving. The current paradigm has problems or questions that the scientist, as puzzle solver, seeks to resolve through experimentation, observation, and the further articulation of the paradigm. Normal science has rules that govern research, but for Kuhn rules "derive from paradigms, but paradigms can guide research even in the absence of rules" (Kuhn, 1996, p. 42). In other words, paradigms...