> An analogy from a couple years ago is bridge building before physics. You accumulate rules of thumb, you get a vague understand what works. You get better. But you aren't producing a systematic field.

This would be more like Kuhn's pre-paradigmatic (pre-scientific) activity, than moving from one scientific paradigm to another ?

https://samzdat.com/2018/05/19/science-under-high-modernism/

(I don't know which one is more appropriate here.)