Scientific Research between Orthodoxy and Anomaly

Abstract

Scientific research takes place in the fi eld of tension between accepted coherent knowledge and not-understood, not-integrated fragments: between orthodoxy and anomaly. Orthodox knowledge is characterized by laws and norms which can be conceived formally (deterministic or statistical laws), methodologically (criteria for scientific work), or conceptually (frameworks of thinking, regulative principles). I propose to classify anomalies according to their feasibility of being systematically connected with accepted knowledge. In this way, one can distinguish anomalies at the frontier of our knowledge, interior anomalies surrounded by accepted knowledge, and anomalies in no man’s land. I discuss examples which are intended to exemplify essential characteristics of each of these groups. Anomalies are the salt in the soup of science and dissolve where the domain of accepted knowledge extends or deepens—either by being elucidated or by being abolished.