Philosophy of Science by Samir Okasha

Author:Samir Okasha [Okasha, Samir]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780191062797
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2016-05-04T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 5

Scientific change and scientific revolutions

Scientific ideas change fast. Pick virtually any scientific discipline you like, and you can be sure that the prevalent theories in the discipline will be different from those of fifty years ago, and very different from those of 100 years ago. Compared with other areas of intellectual endeavour, science is a rapidly changing activity. A number of interesting philosophical questions centre on the issue of scientific change. Is there a discernible pattern to the way scientific ideas change over time? When scientists abandon their existing theory in favour of a new one, how should we explain this? Are later scientific theories objectively better than earlier ones?

Most modern discussion of these questions takes off from the work of Thomas Kuhn, an American historian and philosopher of science. In 1963 Kuhn published a book called The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, which had an enormous influence on subsequent philosophy of science. The impact of Kuhn’s ideas has also been felt in academic disciplines such as sociology and anthropology, and in the intellectual culture at large. (The Guardian newspaper included The Structure of Scientific Revolutions in its list of the 100 most influential books of the 20th century.) To understand why Kuhn’s ideas caused such a stir, we need to look briefly at the state of philosophy of science prior to the publication of his book.

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