In his 1962 book, 'The Structure of Scientific Revolutions,' Thomas Kuhn offered a unique approach for explaining the evolution of scientific worldviews. Though Kuhn had been trained as a physicist, his method could be used to illustrate the workings of other fields also (sociology, chemistry, etc.).
The main contention of 'Structure' (as Kuhn referred to it) is that ‘scientific progress’ comes about not at a steady pace but, rather, in spasmodic upheavals.   During stable periods, ‘normal science’ does yeoman duty in everyday research, which is based on a widely-accepted worldview, a paradigm. The testing and confirming of the paradigm proceeds until testing encounters data that do not fit the paradigm. Such anomalies, if not resolved, open the door to alternative interpretations that can bring about a crisis. Should an alternative framework find wide acceptance, the previous paradigm becomes sidelined and a new framework emerges, a new paradigm.
Such Kuhnian analysis works well in the field of cultural astronomy, where the influence of outside pressures, cultural, philosophical, religious, political, etc., can prove just as powerful as what observers ‘see’ with their own eyes. In the period between the rise of  medieval Aristotelianism (c. 1200 CE) and the Scientific Revolution (c. 1700 CE), various anomalies called into question aspects of the prevailing medieval paradigm. Main anomalies included:   • Stationary Earth sits at center of the universe (Aristotle, 'On The Heavens'). The entire firmament revolved around the unmoving Earth, once every 24 hours, until Copernicus formulated his heliocentric system (1543).   • Celestial orbits were perfect circles (Aristotle, 'On the Heavens'). To account for apparent retrograde planetary motions, epicycles and other refinements were invented, to try to match theory with observation. Alexandrian astronomers had attempted to measure the interval between equinoxes with brass rings (Ptolemy, 'Almagest') mounted at more or less precise angles. Observations of such rings would give a roughly 7 days difference between the winter swing from fall equinox to spring equinox, and the summer swing from spring equinox to fall equinox. This calculable difference would suggest that celestial orbits were not perfect circles, but, as Kepler’s First Law would state (1609), they are ellipses, which eliminates the need for epicycles, equants, etc.
• Milky Way was deemed a non-celestial, sublunary atmospheric phenomenon (Aristotle, 'Meteorology'), until Galileo pointed his telescope at the Milky Circle and saw it was all stars ('Sidereus Nuncius,' 1610). Who you gonna believe? Aristotle, or your own eyes?
These anomalies brought down the Aristotelian geocentric paradigm, and brought about the heliocentric paradigm of the Scientific Revolution.