The idea was elaborated upon by
Thomas Kuhn, a science historian/philosopher, in his book
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
His major premise was that paradigms were concepts underlying a current understanding of a scientific field.
They provided a standard way to look at things and evaluate results in times of normal science.
However, during times of "crisis" when explanations, for some people, were not up to explaining things in the field, alternative paradigms would arise to explain that which was not being explained satisfactorily.
Since not everyone was in agreement, there will be disagreements.
Some of the people holding to the ideas might not change their minds, but not be convincing to those with the newer way of thinking of things. Their views would vanish from active science when they died off.
Many scientists like this because history and much of their scientific experience seems to support his basic idea.
