The article argues that Polanyi was a likely source of influence on the theory of science that Kuhn developed in his The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. The striking similarity between Kuhn’s idea ofincommuensurability and Polanyi’s rendering of scientific controversy in Personal Knowledge is featured here, and is used to expose a tension between Polanyi's notions of scientific controversy and unfolding truth.

This paper discusses creativity, continuity and discontinuity in science and in art by drawing parallels between Kuhn and Gombrich. It seeks to show that, while the idea of strict cumulative progress in the history of science, as well as in the history of art, was abandoned as a new historiography emerged that was sensitive to ruptures, this does not imply denial of all continuity. However, continuity in this context is not a mere logical continuity, but rather a more complex theoretical (...) and historical relation. (shrink)

This book explores the way in which, working within the investigative tradition associated with the Royal Society, the philosopher John Locke (1632-1704) used ...

“There could be no fairer destiny for any. . . theory than that it should point the way to a more comprehensive theory in which it lives on, as a limiting case.” ALBERT EINSTEIN..