CHAPTER XI

THE INVISIBILITY OF REVOLUTION

OVERVIEW
Because paradigm shifts are generally
viewed not as revolutions but as
additions to scientific knowledge, and
because the history of the field is
represented in the textbooks that
accompany a new paradigm, a
scientific revolution seems invisible.

OVERVIEW
This was illustrated throughout the chapter by
citations of different examples of old theories
(paradigms) which had "disappeared." One
was a textbook example - the older textbooks
have older theories in them, and as the books
become more recent, the older theories are not
included. This causes the old theories to
disappear.

I. An increasing reliance on textbooks is an invariable

concomitant of the emergence of a first paradigm in
any field of science.
II. The image of creative scientific activity is largely
created by a field's textbooks.
A.

B.

C.

Textbooks are the pedagogic vehicles for the perpetuation

of normal science.
These texts become the authoritative source of the history
of science.
Both the layman's and the practitioner's knowledge of
science is based on textbooks.

III. A field's texts must be rewritten in the

aftermath of a scientific revolution.
A.

B.

Once rewritten, they inevitably disguise no only

the role but the existence and significance of
the revolutions that produced them.
The resulting textbooks truncate the scientist's
sense of his discipline's history and supply a
substitute for what they eliminate.

a.

b.

c.

More often than not, they contain very little history at

all (Whitehead: "A science that hesitates to forget its
founders is lost.")
In the rewrite, earlier scientists are represented as
having worked on the same set of fixed problems
and in accordance with the same set of fixed canons
that the most recent revolution and method has
made seem scientific.
Why dignify what science's best and most persistent
efforts have made it possible to discard?

Yet he (Whitehead) was not quite right, for the

sciences, like other professional enterprises, do need
their heroes and do preserve their name.
Fortunately, instead of forgetting these heroes,
scientists have been able to forget or revise their
works.
The result is a persistent tendency to make the
history of science look linear or cumulative, a
tendency that even affects scientists looking back at
their own research.
Example: Dalton What all of Daltons accounts omit
are the revolutionary effects of applying to chemistry
a set of questions and concepts previously restricted
to physics and meteorology.

A.

B.

These misconstructions render revolutions

invisible.
They also work to deny revolutions as a
function.

V. Science textbooks present the inaccurate view that science

has reached its present state by a series of individual
discoveries and inventions that, when gathered together,
constitute the modern body of technical knowledgethe
addition of bricks to a building.
A.

B.

This piecemeal-discovered facts approach of a textbook

presentation illustrates the pattern of historical mistakes that
misleads both students and laymen about the nature of the
scientific enterprise.
More than any other single aspect of science, that pedagogic
form [the textbook] has determined our image of the nature of
science and of the role of discovery and invention in its advance.

To bolster the persuasive value of his

arguments in this chapter Kuhn uses
several illustrations:
1. Dalton's account of his development of
chemical alchemism omits "the
revolutionary effects of applying to
chemistry a set of questions and concepts
previously restricted to physics and
meteorology. By obtaining a solution, then
writing retrospectively,

making it seem as if he was always

interested in this solution - Dalton
obscures the true nature of his own
research.
2. When "Newton wrote that Galileo had
discovered that the constant force of
gravity produces a motion proportional to
the square of time", Newton obscured the
nature of Galileo's contribution. When
Galileo's theory was

imbedded in Newton's own paradigm, it did

indeed take this form, but Galileo never
envisioned his theory in this way-- in fact, his
paradigm did not permit it.
3. Finally, Boyle is credited with 'defining'
element. But Boyle's 'definition' of element
was only a paraphrase of an idea dating back
to Aristotle and only presented so as to argue
"no such thing...exists."

Since Boyle's verbal formulation was

embedded within his own paradigm, his
'definition' lacks the contextual meaning that
the current definition of element enjoys under
the modern chemical paradigm.