Hermann Lotze's critique of Johannes Müller's doctrine of specific sense energies.

DOES EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY follow Karl Popper's "logic of scientific discovery", advancing through falsification and refutation?' Or does it progress through puzzle-solving within a paradigm, as Thomas Kuhn characterized the "psychology of research"?2 The case of Lotze's critique of Miller's doctrine of specific sense energies supports the Kuhn thesis. Even though Lotze's logical criteria did falsify and refute the Miiller doctrine, the doctrine survived because of a quixotic allegiance to its paradigm by the scientific community, illustrated by this passage from a typical modem textbook: