ABSTRACT
The evolutionary paradigm may be out of fashion in social science epistemology, but the growth of knowledge in academic disciplines is still generally considered to follow an evolutionary pattern, in which each successive stage represents a distinct advance on more primitive earlier phases. Such scientific pro gress is, moreover, increasingly seen nowadays as consisting not so much of regular linear lines of progress, but rather of erratic Kuhnian 'break-throughs', in which new paradigms render ob solete earlier theories. Such an absolutist and discontinuous view of change necessarily emphasises differences and incompatibilities between competing ideas and theories. The charting of such irregular paradigm shifts in the progress of knowledge is one of the main tasks of historiographers and philosophers of science. This is naturally best developed in subjects with a long and closely-studied history.
