The Dynamics of Scientific Change

The question of how scientific theories, concepts and practices change over time has long been at the heart of the history and philosophy of science. Ever since Thomas Kuhn’s landmark work, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, was published in 1962, historians, philosophers and sociologists of science have engaged in a lively debate over this question. While philosophers have typically sought to understand science as unfolding according to its own epistemic norms and internal logic, historians have tended to focus more on the social and cultural context under which new forms of inquiry and new structures of knowledge emerge.