ABSTRACT
After all, it is characteristic of modern science to produce deliberately mutant conceptual structures with which to challenge the world.
Contemporary interest in conceptual change developed out work in history-based philosophy of science, particularly the work of Kuhn and Feyerabend, and much of the philosophical literature has focused on the examples they used. These are important examples; they include the development of Copernican astronomy and Newtonian mechanics along with the replacement of their Aristotelian, Ptolemaic, and Brahean predecessors; the introduction of relativity and quantum mechanics, and their contested conceptual relations to classical mechanics; the advent of Lavoisier’s chemistry which superseded the phlogiston theory; and a few others. I will consider these cases in the course of this book, but the continued focus on just these examples leaves the impression that conceptual change is an isolated phenomenon in human cognitive history and in the course of an individual life. In this chapter I will endeavor to broaden the base of our discussion by describing a number of additional cases of conceptual innovation in science, mathematics, technology, society at large, and philosophy. I have two aims in these discussions: to underline the pervasive role of conceptual innovation in the development of knowledge and to provide a working database that any theory of concepts must address. Further examples will be introduced throughout this book.
