Well... if we're talking about Gould's "punctuated equilibrium" in evolution then we're dealing with fossilized bones which cannot tell us much about developments in, for example, internal organs.
So fossilized bones might appear more-or-less the same over some period of time, while internal organs adjusted to a new condition.
Kuhn's more general ideas could suffer the same way: yes, on the surface it could appear a certain scientific idea was unchanged over a long period, but more careful study reveals much agitation "under the radar":
- "In his 1972 work, Human Understanding, Stephen Toulmin argued that a more realistic picture of science than that presented in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions would admit the fact that revisions in science take place much more frequently, and are much less dramatic than can be explained by the model of revolution/normal science.
In Toulmin's view, such revisions occur quite often during periods of what Kuhn would call "normal science."
For Kuhn to explain such revisions in terms of the non-paradigmatic puzzle solutions of normal science, he would need to delineate what is perhaps an implausibly sharp distinction between paradigmatic and non-paradigmatic science."
Kuhn:
Toumlin:
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