Largely as the result of Thomas Kuhn's work, the concept of scientific revolution gains an importance in postpositivist philosophy of science that it lacks in the dominant logical empiricist tradition of the twentieth century. Kuhn's notion of scientific revolution becomes wedded to a historical relativism concerning scientific knowledge that many have sought to refute, or overcome with new accounts of knowledge that go beyond positivism and relativism.

The Conception of Scientific Revolution in Traditional Philosophy of Science

To set the context for these debates, it is useful to begin with the ordinary concept of scientific revolution and understand why it lacks fundamental epistemological significance in traditional philosophy of science. In ordinary parlance, a scientific revolution is a large-scale change in the fundamental concepts, theories, or methods that scientists in some area of inquiry emply to understand the course of nature (e.g., the Copernican revolution in...