This paper is an introduction to the special issue commemorating the 50th anniversary of the publication of _The Structure of Scientific Revolutions_ by Thomas Kuhn. It introduces some main ideas of _Structure_, as its change in historical perspective for the interpretation of scientific progress, the role and nature of scientific communities, the incommensurability concept, or the new-world problem, and summarizes some philosophical reactions. After this introduction, the special issue includes papers by Alexander Bird, Paul Hoyningen-Huene and George Reisch on different (...) aspects of Kuhn’s work. (shrink)

The ArgumentThis paper is a study of the role of language in scientific activity. It recommends that language be viewed as a community's means of patterning its affairs. Language represents where the boundaries of the community are and who is entitled to speak within it, and it displays the structures of authority in the community. Moreover, language precipitates the community's view of what the world is like, such that linguistic usages can be taken as referring to that world. Thus, language (...) connects on the one side to a community's practical life, and, on the other, to the reality on which it “reports.”The example treated is Robert Boyle's view of the language proper for experimental practice, and his arguments against the value and legitimacy of mathematical representations within the experimental community. Boyle argued that the use of mathematics was inappropriate because (i) it would restrict the number of potential participants; (ii) it would give rise to unwarranted expectations of the certainty and accuracy to be expected of real physical inquiries; (iii) it would suggest views of natural law and God's relations with the natural world which were incorrect and possibly dangerous; and because (iv) the world upon which the experimentalist operated was not such as was represented by mathematical idealizations. I try to establish that decision about the appropriate language for the experimental community was a moral choice. (shrink)

Thomas Kuhn's philosophy of science, which he developed by focusing on physics, was later applied by other authors to virtually all areas or disciplines of culture. What interests me here, however, is the movement in the opposite direction: the role that one of these disciplines, history of art, played in the conception of Kuhn'stheoryof science.In a 1969 article, his only published text concerning science and art, Kuhn makes a brief and intriguing observation about The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. He says (...) the book was a belated product of his discovery of the parallels between science and art. This is a retrospective assertion about Structure, as well as that of the... (shrink)

What is the contribution of Duhem’s work to the modern historiography? His interpreters have been discussing this question and ordinarily have recognized that the main aspect in his extensive work is connected with his research of medieval science. It has become customary to speak of the “discovery of medieval science” as his foremost historiographic achievement. This paper aims to discuss some aspects of Duhem’s historiography more for its promotion of a new historical perspective than for its results. Duhem’s legacy for (...) modern historiography can be investigated from the characteristics that mark this new perspective, as regarded by Thomas Kuhn. (shrink)

This paper is an introduction to the special issue commemorating the 50th anniversary of the publication of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn. It introduces some main ideas of Structure, as its change in historical perspective for the interpretation of scientific progress, the role and nature of scientificcommunities, the incommensurability concept, or the new-world problem, and summarizes some philosophical reactions. After this introduction, the special issue includes papers by Alexander Bird, Paul Hoyningen-Huene and George Reisch on different aspects (...) of Kuhn’s work.Este artículo es una introducción al número monográfico que conmemora el 50º aniversario de la publicación de La estructura de las revoluciones científicas de Thomas Kuhn. En la introducción se presentan algunas de las ideas principales del libro, como su cambio de perspectiva histórica para la interpretación del progreso científico, el papel y naturaleza de las comunidades científicas, el concepto de inconmensurabilidad o el problema del cambio de mundo, y se resumen algunas reacciones filosóficas a las mismas. Tras la introducción, el número monográfico está compuesto por artículos de Alexander Bird, Paul Hoyningen-Huene y George Reisch que versan sobre diversos aspectos de la obra de Kuhn. (shrink)

The ArgumentFocusing on the celebrations of Newton and his work, this article investigates the use of the concept of genius and its connection with debates on the methodology of science and the morality of great discoverers. During the period studied, two areas of tension developed. Firstly, eighteenth-century ideas about the relationship between genius and method were challenged by the notion of scientific genius as transcending specifiable rules of method. Secondly, assumptions about the nexus between intellectual and moral virtue were threatened (...) by the emerging conception of genius as marked by an extraordinary personality – on the one hand capable of breaking with established methods to achieve great discoveries, on the other, likely to transgress moral and social conventions. The assesments of Newton by nineteenth-century scientists such as Brewster, Whewell, and De Morgan were informed by these tensions. (shrink)

This paper argues that evaluation of the truth and rationality of past scientific theories is both possible and profitable. The motivation for this enterprise is traced to recent discussions by I. Lakatos, L. Laudan and others on the import of history for the philosophy of science; several objections to it are considered and T. S. Kuhn is found to advance the most substantive. An argument for establishing judgements of rationality and truth in the face of scientific revolutions is presented; finally (...) evidence is offered for the value of such assessments to historiography and to debates on scientific progress. (shrink)