ABSTRACT
According to well-informed observers, we are now in the midst of a ‘revolution’ in the historiography of science. The conventional ‘uniformitarian’ conception of scientific progress as a continuous process of stockpiling facts and techniques is being challenged by a ‘catastrophist’ view that the process has been subject to periodic breakdowns and changes of direction, discontinuities obscured by historians who have unconsciously interpreted the past in the light of their own epistemological preconceptions. The leading advocate of the catastrophist veiwpoint is Thomas S.Kuhn, whose brilliant book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), has provoked considerable controversy among historians of science;1 and this paper is designed to draw the attention of economists to his stimulating central thesis.
