Explaining Change in Science

Abstract

Philosophical theories of scientific change abound and, for the most part, they have one thing in common: they are theories of rational justification for changing scientific theories. That is, they are not about science per se, where science is construed as a social process whose main activity is the generation and testing of ideas about the composition and structure of the material universe. The kinds of theories of scientific change I have in mind are exemplified by the work of Popper (1959), Lakatos (1970), Kuhn (1962), and Laudan (1977).