The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
Thomas Kuhn · 1962
"Science doesn't progress through smooth, cumulative accumulation of facts — it alternates between long periods of stable 'normal science' within an accepted paradigm and rare, disruptive 'paradigm shifts' where the entire framework for interpreting evidence is replaced."
Kuhn's 1962 book introduced the phrase 'paradigm shift' to describe something historians of science had noticed but not fully named: scientific revolutions don't add new facts to old theories, they replace the entire lens the facts are viewed through.
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Guns, Germs, and Steel
"Which civilizations ended up conquering others was driven overwhelmingly by geographic and environmental accident — access to domesticable plants and animals, and an east-west continental axis that let farming spread easily — not by any difference in the people themselves."