94 COSMOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY 



rored in a hardening of my ideas. As ideas become dius finalized as 

 dogmas, even creeds, diere yawns between cosmology and science the 

 Jamesian chasm— "between categories fulminated before nature be- 

 gan, and categories gradually forming themselves in nature's pres- 

 ence." Founded on the principle of corrigible fallibility— denying to 

 itself any claim to knowledge of "first principles"— science remains 

 ever plastic, even to drastic change. In cosmology the possibility of 

 change is commonly unrecognized, even denied: hard but brittle, 

 a cosmology crumbles under the impact of new ideas, the effect of 

 which is then plainly revolutionary. 



Are there not "scientific revolutions"? Even a revolution in cos- 

 mology must have some secondary impact in science: the attitudes 

 engendered by my personal cosmology influence the orientation of 

 my efforts as scientist. But the discussion of "scientific revolutions" 

 (in Chapter IX) leads to the conclusion that their most conspicuous 

 trait is their i/n-revolutionary quality in science. Even without bene- 

 fit of that discussion, one easily recognizes that in our actual usage 

 the term "scientific revolution" designates solely certain episodes 

 that were revolutions in cosmology. The works of Copernicus, New- 

 ton, Darwin, and perhaps Freud are commonly regarded as scientific 

 revolutions. But the works of Lavoisier, Dalton, and Maxwell are 

 rarely so regarded, though inferior neither in novelty nor in scientific 

 importance. \Miy? In the first group of works each has ^'ery large 

 cosmologic connotations; we attach no such connotations to the 

 works in the second group. 



As a scientific doctrine Copernicus' theory was no worse than 

 ludicrous. Its immediate cosmologic impact was sufficient to rouse 

 die wrath of Luther; its delayed impact was violently explosi\'e. And 

 obser\'e that while Galileo was "only" severely rebuked for espous- 

 ing the Copernican theory as science, Bruno was (in 1600) burnt at 

 the stake for heresies nourished by its rich cosmologic implications, 

 e.g., the infinitude of the universe and the plurality of inhabited 

 worlds. Here, in cosmology and not in science, occurs the true Co- 

 pernican revolution. As die directly contrasting case consider La- 

 voisier who, overthrowing the phlogiston theory, may be held to have 

 worked a revolution. Indeed, chemical thought is by him changed 

 as drastically as astronomical thought by Copernicus. However, 

 while Copernicus is generally acknowledged to have worked a revo- 

 lution in human thought, the very most we say for Lavoisier is that 



