All Crises Begin With The Blurring Of

It Is, I Think, Particularly In Periods Of Acknowledged Crisis That Scientists Have Turned To Philosophical Analysis As A Device For Unlocking The Riddles Of Their Field. Scientists Have Not Generally Needed Or Wanted To Be Philosophers.

To Turn Karl [popper]'s View On Its Head, It Is Precisely The Abandonment Of Critical Discourse That Marks The Transition Of Science. Once A Field Has Made The Transition, Critical Discourse Recurs Only At Moments Of Crisis When The Bases Of The Field Are Again In Jeopardy. Only When They Must Choose Between Competing Theories Do Scientists Behave Like Philosophers.

Its Assimilation Requires The Reconstruction Of Prior Theory And Re-evaluation Of Prior Fact, An Intrinsically Revolutionary Process That Is Seldom Completed A Single Man And Never Overnight

The Man Who Is Striving To Solve A Problem Defined By Existing Knowledge And Technique Is Not, However, Just Looking Around. He Knows What He Wants To Achieve, And He Designs His Instruments And Directs His Thoughts Accordingly. Unanticipated Novelty, The New Discovery, Can Emerge Only To The Extent That His Anticipations About Nature And His Instruments Prove Wrong... There Is No Other Effective Way In Which Discoveries Might Be Generated.

Communication Across The Revolutionary Divide Is Inevitably Partial.