"laypeople" - 1 õppematerjal

Teadusfilosoofia – ja metodoloogia

Invisibility of Scientific Revolutions’. In this chapter Kuhn revisits the themes developed in earlier chapters. He explains that the celebrated scientific revolutions that he uses as examples are selected solely that the reader is already familiar with them. Kuhn suggests in this chapter that revolutions are invisible because of historical revisionism in science textbooks. His argument runs along the following lines. Firstly assuming that scientists and laypeople use textbooks as the primary source of learning about a scientific field then the presentation of the field within the textbooks is of central importance. Secondly Kuhn suggests that there is a central assumption that science is independent of the historical context (note that he himself does not hold this view). Thirdly Kuhn argues that when a revolution has occurred there is a need to rewrite the science textbooks. This rewriting follows a pattern. Thus the central problems which were