New paradigms tend to be invented by newcomers
New paradigms are most likely to be discovered (or invented) by people who have sufficient familiarity with the received paradigm to recognize its deficiencies, but not so much familiarity with it as to be entrenched—and possibly vocationally committed to it.
Let us here note only one thing about it. Almost always the men who achieve these fundamental inventions of a new paradigm have been either very young or very new to the field whose paradigm they change. And perhaps that point need not have been made explicit, for obviously these are the men who, being little committed by prior practice to the traditional rules of normal science, are particularly likely to see that those rules no longer define a playable game and to conceive another set that can replace them.[1]
See also:
- Lateral thinking is range in action
- It is difficult to make someone understand what their salary depends on them not understanding
- It is impossible to teach a man what he thinks he already knows