Science progresses when a theory is shown to be wrong and a new theory is introduced which better explains the phenomena. Popper does think that science can help us progressively approach the truth but we can never be certain that we have the final explanation. Kuhn looked at the history of science and argued that science does not simply progress by stages based upon neutral observations. Like Popper, he agrees that all observation is theory laden. For Kuhn the history of science is characterised by revolutions in scientific outlook.
Scientists accept the dominant paradigm until anomalies are thrown up.
Scientists then begin to question the basis of the paradigm itself, new theories emerge which challenge the dominant paradigm and eventually one of these new theories becomes accepted as the new paradigm. Paul Feyerabend Paul Feyerabend thought that the superiority of the modern scientific method should not be assumed. Feyerabend agrees with Kuhn that the history of science is the history of different viewpoints, and for Feyerabend this means that what counts as 'knowledge' in the future may have paradigms we cannot yet know. As we cannot yet know them, we should not attempt to forbid future intellectual enterprise by attempting to define one narrow dominant paradigm of knowledge using the model of physics. In the 20th century, Einstein's theory of relativity overthrew the Newtonian paradigm that had been dominant since the Enlightenment.