ABSTRACT
The problem of conceptual change has been widely discussed in the philosophy of science since the early 1960s, when Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend, among others, launched a powerful critique against logical positivism, a critique based on a close reading of the history of the physical sciences. One of their most far-reaching theses was that scientifi c concepts are historical entities that evolve over time and are replaced by altogether different ones. In their view, the older concepts and their descendants refer to completely different entities. The very subject matter of scientifi c investigation shifts along with conceptual change. Furthermore, because of such ontological shifts, the possibility of giving an account of theory change as a rational process is undermined. In post-Kuhnian philosophy of science, there has been considerable effort to come to terms with those ontological and epistemological implications of conceptual change.
