Revolution in Science

by Cohen, I. Bernard

• ISBN13: 9780674767782
• ISBN10: 0674767780
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1987-03-15
• Publisher: Belknap Pr

Summary

Only a scholar as rich in learning as I. Bernard Cohen could do justice to a theme so subtle and yet so grand. Spanning five centuries and virtually all of scientific endeavor, Revolution in Science traces the nuances that differentiate both scientific revolutions and human perceptions of them, weaving threads of detail from physics, mathematics, behaviorism, Freud, atomic physics, and even plate tectonics and molecular biology, into the larger fabric of intellectual history.How did "revolution," a term from the physical sciences, meaning a turning again and implying permanence and recurrence--the cyclical succession of the seasons, the 'revolutions' of the planets in their orbits--become transformed into an expression for radical change in political and socioeconomic affairs, then become appropriated once again to the sciences?How have political revolutions--French, American, Bolshevik--and such intellectual forces as Darwinism further modified the concept, from revolution in science as a dramatic break with the past to the idea that science progresses by the slow accumulation of knowledge? And what does each transformation in each historical period tell us about the deep conceptual changes in our image of the scientist and scientific activity?Cohen's exploration seeks to uncover nothing less than the nature of all scientific revolutions, the stages by which they occur, their time scale, specific criteria for determining whether or not there has been a revolution, and the creative factors in producing a revolutionary new idea. His book is a probing analysis of the history of an idea and one of the most impressive surveys of the history of science ever undertaken.

Table of Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

Science and Revolution

Introduction

The Stages of Revolutions in Science

Evidence for the Occurrence of Revolutions in Science

Historical Perspective on 'Revolution' and 'Revolution in Science'

Transformations in the Concept of Revolution

The Scientific Revolution: The First Recognition of Revolution in Science

A Second Scientific Revolution and Others?

Scientific Revolutionaries of the Seventeenth Century

The Copernican Revolution

Kepler, Gilbert, and Galileo: A Revolution in the Physical Sciences?

Bacon and Descartes

The Newtonian Revolution

Vesalius, Paracelsus, and Harvey: A Revolution in the Life Sciences?

Changing Concepts of Revolution in the Eighteenth Century

Transformations during the Enlightenment

Eighteenth-Century Conceptions of Scientific Revolution

Lavoisier and the Chemical Revolution

Kant's Alleged Copernican Revolution

The Changing Language of Revolution in Germany

The Industrial Revolution

Scientific Progress in the Nineteenth Century

By Revolution or Evolution?

The Darwinian Revolution

Faraday, Maxwell, and Hertz

Some Other Scientific Developments

Three French Views: Saint-Simon, Comte, and Cournot

The Influence of Marx and Engels

The Freudian Revolution

The Twentieth Century, Age of Revolutions

The Scientists Speak

The Historians Speak

Relativity and Quantum Theory

Einstein on Revolution in Science

Continental Drift and Plate Tectonics: A Revolution in Earth Science

Conclusion: Conversion as a Feature of Scientific Revolutions

Supplements

A Note on Citations and References

Notes

References

Index

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