ABSTRACT
Hanson has not received sufficient credit – some might say blame – for developing the paradigm-relativist approach to the history and philosophy of science that became best known through Thomas Kuhn’s remarkably influential book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.1 What I aim to do here is make the case for Hanson not only as the first proponent of this theory but also as a thinker who brought out its problems more clearly than Kuhn, despite taking a strong line in its defence. That is to say, Hanson engages with a range of philosophical issues (such as the underdetermination of theory by evidence and the theory-laden character of observation-statements) that have loomed large in subsequent debates around Kuhn’s work but which Kuhn himself never brings into anything like so sharp a focus.2 So this chapter is intended partly as a means of doing justice to Hanson’s achievement – giving credit where credit is due – and partly as a diagnostic exercise which seeks to draw out some of the unresolved conflicts that characterise his thinking and still bear crucially on current debates in philosophy of science.
