Is Science Cumulative?

Cumulative acquisition of unanticipated novelties proves to be an almost non-existent exception to the rule of scientific development.  The man who takes historic fact seriously must suspect that science does not tend toward the ideal that our image of its cumulativeness has suggested.  Perhaps it is another sort of enterprise.
If, however, resistant facts can carry us that far, then a second look at the ground we have already covered may suggest that cumulative acquisition of novelty is not only rare in fact but improbable in principle.  Normal research, which is cumulative, owes its success to the ability of scientists regularly to select problems that can be solved with conceptual and instrumental techniques close to those already in existence.
—   Thomas S. Kuhn
From his book:  “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions“
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On This Day In:
2022	A Happy Realization
2021	Is Science Cumulative?
	We’re Aging With Time
2020	Where #45 Is Leading The Republican Party
2019	Your Own Blog Posts
	The Man With A Code
2018	Choose Goodness
2017	Developing Translations
2016	Think Like A Hero
2015	Reductionism
2014	Gravitation, n.
2013	Ups And Downs
2012	Nerd Heard – And Good-Bye
	Your Continuum
2011	Career Tips (Part 2)

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