From Theory Choice to Theory Search: The Essential Tension Between Exploration and Exploitation in Science

Abstract

Early in his work Kuhn identifies a tension in science between conservativeness and innovation in theory development; that is, scientists face uncertainty in choosing between the exploitation of an existing theory or the creation of a new one. Kuhn suggests that theory choice should be based on heuristics involving common scientific virtues; however, he does not specify how those values could lead a decentralized group of scientists to collectively produce successful science. In this chapter, we introduce a model for how this process might take place. We shift the focus of rational theory choice from selecting the best among a given set of theories to finding a balance between selecting among given theories and searching for new ones. Here we show that the local interactions of rational scientists balancing the exploitation and exploration of theories results in a very robust pattern characterized by a succession of tradition-bound periods punctuated by non-cumulative breaks.