Shifty

Every explanation’s incomplete
And therefore too simplistic. Every
Good research program complicates things.

These inevitabilities lead
To a repetitive, tiresome game,
In which every fresh discovery

Stirs up talk of a paradigm shift
And often of the simplicity,
Maybe malignant recalcitrance,

Of the earlier orthodoxy
Whether an orthodoxy or not.
We’ll grant people can be malignant,

But paradigm shift’s a paradigm,
And heroic new explanations
Tend to turn shifty as those of old.