On page 39 of "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" (2nd ed., 1970), Kuhn writes:

> "Throughout the eighteenth century those scientists who tried to derive the observed motion of the moon from Newton's laws of motion and gravitation consistently failed to do so. As a result, some of them suggested replacing the inverse square law with a law that deviated from it at small distances, To do that, however, would have been to change the paradigm, to define a new puzzle, and not to solve the old one. In the event, scientists preserved the rules until, in 1750, one of them discovered how they could successfully be applied.'"

The failed attempts at explanation Kuhn mentions fulfill his criteria for failed puzzle-solving. However, William Whewell, the source Kuhn cites, paints a much different picture of what happened:

> "We have already remarked, in the history of analytical mechanics, that in the lunar theory, considered as one of the cases of the problem of three bodies, no advance was made beyond what Newton had done, till mathematicians threw aside the Newtonian artifices, and applied the newly-developed generalizations of the analytical method. The first great apparent deficiency in the agreement of the law of universal gravitation with astronomical observation, was removed by Clairaut's improved approximation to the theoretical motion of the moon's apogee in 1750 ; yet not till it had caused so much disquietude, that Clairaut himself had suggested a modification of the law of attraction ; and it was only in tracing the consequences of this suggestion, that he found the Newtonian law of the inverse square to be that which, when rightly developed, agreed with the facts."

Whewell explicitly writes that scientists had manifoldly broken the rules laid out by Newton before they solved the problem. For Whewell, it was not a preservation of rules that led Clairault to the solution (as Kuhn suggests) but rather their violation.

I cannot understand why Kuhn thinks Whewell is supporting his account here. That is why I dismissed it so early and searched for alternatives. But, unfortunately, by the time I posed this question, I had forgotten about it.