"Under normal conditions the research scientist is not an innovator but a solver of puzzles, and the puzzles upon which he concentrates are just those which he believes can be both stated and solved within the existing scientific tradition"
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Kuhn drops the romantic image of the lone genius like a mic and replaces it with something more institutional: the scientist as a disciplined craft worker, rewarded less for revolution than for competence. Calling “normal” research “puzzle-solving” is a deliberately deflating metaphor. Puzzles are finite. They presume a correct answer. They’re designed inside a frame. That’s the point: most scientific labor isn’t about questioning the frame; it’s about proving you can operate within it.
The subtext is almost bureaucratic. Scientific communities don’t just discover truths; they manage expectations. A puzzle is attractive precisely because it’s legible to your peers, fundable by your institution, publishable in your journals. Kuhn is signaling that “what counts” as a good scientific question is socially curated. Researchers “concentrate” on problems they “believe” can be solved not because they lack imagination, but because careers, reputations, and the very definition of rigor are calibrated to confirm the reigning tradition.
Context matters: Kuhn is writing against the flattering story of science as a smooth, cumulative march of rationality. His larger argument in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is that paradigms set the rules of the game, and normal science plays it hard until anomalies pile up and a revolution resets the rules. The line is sharp because it implies a tension we still live with: the system that makes science reliable also makes it conservative. Innovation isn’t the default setting; it’s the disruptive exception that the “puzzle” economy is designed to postpone.
The subtext is almost bureaucratic. Scientific communities don’t just discover truths; they manage expectations. A puzzle is attractive precisely because it’s legible to your peers, fundable by your institution, publishable in your journals. Kuhn is signaling that “what counts” as a good scientific question is socially curated. Researchers “concentrate” on problems they “believe” can be solved not because they lack imagination, but because careers, reputations, and the very definition of rigor are calibrated to confirm the reigning tradition.
Context matters: Kuhn is writing against the flattering story of science as a smooth, cumulative march of rationality. His larger argument in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is that paradigms set the rules of the game, and normal science plays it hard until anomalies pile up and a revolution resets the rules. The line is sharp because it implies a tension we still live with: the system that makes science reliable also makes it conservative. Innovation isn’t the default setting; it’s the disruptive exception that the “puzzle” economy is designed to postpone.
Quote Details
| Topic | Science |
|---|---|
| Source | Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962, University of Chicago Press); see chapter "Normal Science as Puzzle‑solving" for Kuhn's account of normal science as puzzle solving. |
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