The Cognitive Structure of Scientific Revolutions |
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Authors: | Peter Barker |
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Institution: | (1) Department of the History of Science, The University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK 73019, USA |
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Abstract: | For historical epistemology to succeed, it must adopt a defensible set of categories to characterise scientific activity over
time. In historically orientated philosophy of science during the twentieth century, the original categories of theory and
observation were supplemented or replaced by categories like paradigm, research program and research tradition. Underlying
all three proposals was talk about conceptual systems and conceptual structures, attributed to individual scientists or to
research communities, however there has been little general agreement on the nature of these structures. Recent experimental
research in cognitive science has considerably refined the theory of concepts. Drawing upon the results of that research,
philosophers can construct more concrete and empirically defensible representations of conceptual systems. I will suggest
that this research supports a modest and useful sense of both normal and revolutionary science, not as epistemological continuities
or discontinuities, but as particular patterns of conceptual change. |
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