Читать книгу Twentieth-Century Philosophy of Science: A History (Third Edition) - Thomas J. Hickey - Страница 87

Change within the institution of science is change made under the regulation of the institutionalized aim of science.

Institutional change is the historical evolution of scientific practices involving revision of the aim of science, which may entail revision of its criteria for criticism, its discovery practices, or its concept of explanation.

Institutional change in science must be distinguished from change within the institutional constraint. Philosophy of science examines both changes within the institution of science and historical changes of the institution itself. But change of the institution is typically recognized only retrospectively due to the distinctively historical uniqueness of each episode and also due to the need for eventual conventionality for new basic-research practices to become institutionalized.

In the history of science institutionally deviate practices, innovative instruments and unconventional concepts that yielded successful results are initially recognized and accepted by only a few scientists. As Feyerabend emphasized in his Against Method, in the history of science successful scientists have often broken the prevailing methodological rules. But the successful departures eventually become conventionalized. By the time they are deemed acceptable to the peer-reviewed literature, reference manuals, encyclopedias and student textbooks, the institutional change is complete and has become the conventional wisdom.

Successful researchers have often failed to understand the reasons for their unconventional successes, and have advanced or accepted erroneous methodological ideas and philosophies of science to explain their successes. One of the most historically notorious such misunderstandings is Isaac Newton’s “hypotheses non fingo”, his denial that his law of gravitation is a hypothesis. Nearly three centuries later Einstein demonstrated otherwise.