Kuhn argues that the paradigms in crisis often share the proliferation of different versions of themselves and the increasingly equivocal traditions in normal science. What first came to mind is that it is the obstacles in communication which prevents scholars from rejecting the paradigm as a collective, as during communication it might not have been made explicitly that different scholars’ understandings of the original paradigm itself have shifted, as the rules of paradigms could not be defined plainly through language, like a kind of tacit knowledge. Therefore the scholars might no longer be working as a collective, guided with the same (or at least with a great resemblance) standards of variables and approaches in normal science, while they are still thought to be working under the same traditions. Because failures of reaching an agreement come in individual cases, they might be left disregarded and scholars would continue their personal version of tradition of normal science.
Nevertheless, in the previous part, the failure of the paradigm might seem very visible only to us looking back in history. If scholars have not yet recognized the proliferation of versions of the initial paradigm, could this situation still be called a state where the failure of a paradigm is very visible for the community? If not, what are the alternate reasons for them not to leave the initial paradigm behind immediately when they have recognized the proliferation of versions of the paradigm?
Maybe it is because of the lack of a new paradigm? Because Kuhn says, you can never reject one paradigm while not accepting another, unless you are quitting science, for there is no supreme law above the community ruling the community itself. There might not be an alternative, or at least there’s not one which is noticed enough that the scholars can turn to. Although, of course, there are always plenty of people out there who want to explain nature with a bundle of ideas.🎵You say you want a revolution~ well~ you know~ we all wanna change the world~🎵But it takes quite long for a new paradigm to establish its authority. I want to make an assertion, that those scientists, trained with repeated practice in normal science, are less likely to propose a radical theory than the laymen, perhaps a habit they picked up to protect their own reputation as they are a part of the academia and treating approaches in normal science as tautology after years, for they are exposed to more knowledge that lies on the basis of the paradigm than the laymen. However, frankly, it is not seemly and almost always it is not the case that a revolutionizing theory is proposed by a layman (though very possible for a relatively new entering scholar to do so,) not to say that they theory would never be correct but they lack the authority to propel the community to design experiments and make theoretical assimilation based on their theory. Kuhn also mentions that successful paradigms should provide problems that have not been answered and could be answered using the premises from the paradigm. To examine the plausibility of a paradigm, scholars need to design problems based on the paradigm and solve these problems; but when the plausibility of a paradigm is not yet examined by colleagues, colleagues are less likely to spend energy on designing problems based on this paradigm, unless the subject continues to be “terribly confused,” like Pauli described physics. But no, is it really that simple? The transition from not responding to the terrible failure of the current paradigm to actively testing colleagues’ radical theories is only caused by the fact that scientists cannot bear this anymore? Certainly, Copernicus and Domenico da Novara did complain about the lack of successfulness and the clumsiness (monster!) of the paradigm of their time in their (in astronomy) but was it the complaints like these that led to the shift of attitude? It is interesting to think about what causes this kind of transition. (ah, and also Einstein, “It was as if the ground had been pulled out from under one, with no firm foundation to be seen anywhere, upon which one could have built.”)
I don’t think scholars are working to disprove nor to prove a paradigm for scientific activities are guided (though not by explicit rules which it lacks) by the paradigm itself, this would only result in circular reasoning. Working to apply one paradigm, solve puzzles to bring it closer to the data collected from nature in more esoteric cases, or commit to theoretical assimilation so it is bridged with other theories in use and once seemed isolated, is enough to trigger the scientific progress. (On a side note, what a wonderful work Dirac did to bridge relativity and quantum theory) It sounds like, although its is not the case, maybe it's a compromise, though scholars know there will never be a complete theory but they have to compromise to work as a collective, and scholars are assuming the current paradigm is applicable and continue to work in science, guided by the paradigm based on their understanding of it, until they fall into crisis. The coming of crises is inevitable I think, although (if I did not misread) Kuhn seems to identify the reason of the crisis as anomalies that are highly resistant and refuse to be assimilated to the current theory and the symptom as a proliferation of versions of a theory. The former one, a natural product of the nature of a paradigm, that it is not perfect. The latter one, I'm not sure if he suggested this in page 83 or not, the original line is as this: that to solve these highly resistant phenomena, numerous partial solutions emerged, and the rules of normal science become increasingly blurred. I would argue that even without the existence of significant anomalies, or without people's attention to them, the proliferation of theories would still come, because Kuhn defines paradigm as something that cannot be spoken explicitly, like tacit knowledge, (he even used Wittgenstein's theory on words) it must have undergone some degree of distortion during the process of science education—even though there is no "most correct version" against which to compare them, and everyone has come to possess their own version, despite the strong family resemblance they share.
Because paradigms differ not only in the theories themselves but also in the meanings of the variables those theories employ, and the standards that are used in examining the importance and meaning of a normal science research. Those meanings and standards depend on the nature of the paradigm, considering from what kind of problems it has grown, what kind of issue does it treat as the most relevant ones. For example, it is certainly not a better way to consider mass as what it is in Einsteinian physics, that it can be converted to energy, when dealing with a car collision. But it is not to say that old paradigms are always used for approximation to save engineers' time, it is not to say that they are a more equivocal resemblence of reality than the new paradigm. A new paradigm might not always reveal or guide scholars to reveal more about, or describe the reality more accurately. For example, as explained by Kuhn in page 107, Lavoisier's new theory could not explain why metals are alike, which philogiston theory did. The scientific community still guadually accepted Lavoisier's paradigm as the problem of increasing mass in combustion was almost the most important focus in chemistry at the time. Another example is how Newtonian theory replaced Cartesian vortex theory. Cartesian vortex theory provides a detailed, mechanical explanation of gravitational attraction (that the rotational motion of stars generates vortex which causes planets' circular motion,) while Newton did not explain why gravitational attraction is able to act over distance, as if it was an occult quality. However, as scientists were unable to practice science (to solve other vital puzzles or to explain essential anomalies in previous paradigms) without the Principia, they guadually accepted gravity as an inner quality.