Where do new ideas and directions of thought come from? Is it possible to set a context for important changes in intellectual culture, in the sciences or the humanities? Can we give any explanation for the development of individual thinkers' thought? These are the key questions that Neil Gross raises in his sociological biography of …
Merton’s sociology of science
The organized study of "science" as an epistemic practice and a knowledge product has taken at least three major forms in the past century: the philosophy of science, the history of science, and the sociology of science. Philosophers have been primarily interested in the logic of scientific inquiry and the rational force of scientific knowledge. …
Kuhn’s paradigm shift
Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) brought about a paradigm shift of its own, in the way that philosophers thought about science. The book was published in the Vienna Circle's International Encyclopedia of Unified Science in 1962. (See earlier posts on the Vienna Circle; post, post.) And almost immediately it stimulated a profound …
Understanding Society 