Revolutions and Their Resolution
摘要
This chapter looks at how Kuhn sees scientific revolutions as being manifested and resolved. Kuhn argued that in spite of the tendency on the part of the scientist to tenaciously cling to a theory, eventually a build-up of anomalies will see a paradigm bought into crisis. With the emergence of a potential successor, scientists will have to make a choice whether to stick with the incumbent paradigm or to jettison it and embrace a successor. The chapter begins with a look at how the crisis state is reached, before examining Kuhn’s portrayal of the resolution of revolutions in Structure. We then move on to examine the response to the criticisms made of Kuhn’s view of revolution resolution, that being his emphasis on the values that scientists employ in theory choice, before concluding with a look at the impact Kuhn’s view of theory change had for a key plank of the received view of science, the distinction between justification and discovery.