This latter aspect of research programmes is inherited from Kuhn's work on paradigms, and represents an important departure from the elementary account of how science works. According to this, science proceeds through repeated cycles of observation, induction, hypothesis-testing, etc., with the test of consistency with empirical evidence being imposed at each stage. Paradigms and research programmes allow anomalies to be set aside, where there is reason to believe that they arise from incomplete knowledge (about either the substantive topic, or some aspect of the theories implicitly used in making observations).
This latter aspect of research programmes is inherited from Kuhn's work on paradigms, and represents an important departure from the elementary account of how science works. According to this, science proceeds through repeated cycles of observation, induction hypothesis-testing etc., with the test of consistency with empirical evidence being imposed at each stage. Paradigms and research programmes allow anomalies to be set aside where there is reason to believe that they arise from incomplete knowledge (about either the substantive topic, or some aspect of the theories implicitly used in making observations).