Normal Science

Normal science is the first step in the Kuhn Cycle. Normal Science is the normal way a like thinking group of people see the world, because they all believe in the same model of explanation. Many models are required for an adult to cope with the world. These models are always changing, because the world around us is changing, which causes what is expected of our models to change. When these needs becomes significant and the model cannot be improved to handle these new requirements, the model has progressed to the next step of the Kuhn Cycle, which is Model Drift.

Wikipedia says that "Normal Science is a concept originated by Thomas Samuel Kuhn and elaborated in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. The term refers to the relatively routine work of scientists experimenting within a paradigm, slowly accumulating detail in accord with established broad theory, not actually challenging or attempting to test the underlying assumptions of that theory. Kuhn identified this mode of science as being a form of 'puzzle-solving.' "

It is the "not actually challenging or attempting to test the underlying assumptions of that theory" that causes a model to fall so far so fast into the rest of the Kuhn Cycle. For example, if environmentalists had started challenging the appropriateness of the process they were using to achieve their objectives as soon as that process started to fail, that process would probably not now be in the Model Crisis step. That process, of course, is Classic Activism.