Thomas Kuhn's thesis concerning the structure of scientific change was critically examined in relation to the historical problems of social science. The use and interpretation of Kuhn's ideas by psychologists was reviewed and found to center around the proliferation of theoretical views as paradigms, the viewing of theoretical differences as paradigm clashes, and efforts to affirm particular conceptions of psychology's past or future. Such use was seen as curbing discussion of fundamental issues, and to reflect a continuing neglect of the (...) foundational problems peculiar to social science. The relevance of Kuhn's work was seen to rest on a more critical view of his idea of “mature” science, better understanding of the type of social psychology upon which his thesis rests, and greater appreciation of his hermeneutic approach to social-historical analysis. (shrink)

Summary This paper presents an immanent criticism of Lakatos' reconstruction of the degenerating phase of Bohr's atomic theory. That is to say, the historiographical methods used are exclusively of a Lakatosian kind. Such a closer Lakatosian look at the historical episode in question shows that Lakatos' own reconstruction is incorrect on three essential points. These are the role of the correspondence principle, the position of the hard core in Bohr's programme, and the presence of important novel predicted facts. I conclude (...) that these defects are irreparable within the framework of Lakatos' methodology of scientific research programmes. (shrink)

One of the ironies of our time is the sparsity of useful analytic tools for understanding change and development within technology itself. For all the diatribes about the disastrous effects of technology on modern life, for all the equally uncritical paeans to technology as the panacea for human ills, the vociferous pro- and anti-technology movements have failed to illuminate the nature of technology. On a more scholarly level, in the midst of claims by Marxists and non-Marxists alike about the technological (...) underpinnings of the major social and economic changes of the last couple of centuries, and despite advice given to government and industry about managing science and technology by a small army of consultants and policy analysts, technology itself remains locked inside an impenetrable black box, a deus ex machina to be invoked when all other explanations of puzzling social and economic pheoomena fail. The discipline that has probably done most to penetrate that black box in recent years by studying the 1 internal development of technology is history. Historians of technology and certain economic historians have carried out careful and detailed studies on the genesis and impact of technological innovations, and the structu-re of the social systems associated with those innovations. Within the past few decades tentative consensus about the periodization and the major traditions within the history of technology has begun to emerge, at least as far as Britain and America in the eighteenth and nineteenth century are concerned. (shrink)

In 1858, August Kekulé and Archibald Scott Couper independently published similar ideas regarding the tetravalence and self-linking ability of carbon atoms; three years later, the Russian chemist Aleksandr Mikhailovich Butlerov read a paper at the German Naturforscherversammlung in Speyer, which restated, clarified, and enlarged upon the ideas of Kekulé and Couper. In 1958, the centenary of the structure theory was celebrated in Chicago, London, Heidelberg, and Ghent; the celebrations in Moscow, Frunze, and Kazan took place three years later. For over (...) a century chemists and chemical historians have disputed the origins of structure theory. Sometimes this activity has been confined to occasional sniping, but at other times determined battles have been fought. The polemic has never been characterized by cool and dispassionate discourse. Western historians have in general been unwilling or unable to master the extensive Russian literature on the question; the arguments of Soviet historians have often been clothed in Marxist rhetoric or otherwise influenced by political considerations. (shrink)

This paper contests the view that the events which have taken place in linguistics following the syntactic theories of N. Chomsky conform to the pattern of scientific development described in Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Specifically, it is argued that neither Kuhn's claims about the nature of 'normal science', nor those about the necessity of crisis preceding periods of revolutionary change, nor those about 'paradigms' succeeding one another in the history of a science, find any confirmation in the case (...) of the generative revolution in linguistics. (shrink)