284 THE EVOLUTION OF SCIENTIFIC THEORIES 



readily drawn from it. An accidental discovery may lead Cavendish 

 to determine the composition of water, which he is able to construe 

 in phlogistic terms. But Cavendish is totally unable to draw from the 

 phlogiston theory any clues to further knowledge, while when La- 

 voisier hears of Cavendish's work he at once goes on to experiments 

 producing new and exciting data. 



The ultimate fate of the old theory, ever more heavily overbur- 

 dened, is no longer open to doubt. Hear Nietzsche: 



An old Chinese sage once said he had heard that when mighty em- 

 pires were doomed they began to have numberless laws. 



The death throes may now be abruptly terminated. Civen grounds 

 for dissatisfaction with the older theory no longer capable of dis- 

 charging its functions, given also a promising alternative to it, the 

 two essential preconditions for a crucial experiment now exist. Any 

 who refuse to accept the verdict of that test will be progressively 

 wiped out by the mechanism of natural selection described earlier. 

 The older theory dies, the older opinion is falsified, a scientific revo- 

 lution has taken place. Wrong, wrong, wrong! The old theory may 

 live still (though on a diflFerent plane), it is not then falsified but 

 only subordinated, and what has occurred in science is an intrin- 

 sically evolutionary development. 



Scientific Revolutions? 



In all revolutions we find some elements of continuity (e.g., the 

 major social reorganization produced by a French or Russian revolu- 

 tion leaves the family grouping essentially intact). In the archetype 

 of all evolutions we find an irreducible element of discontinuity (in 

 organic evolution each mutation is an abrupt discrete step ) . We may 

 nonetheless usefully distinguish revolutions, in which the greater 

 number of the elements of paramount concern change sharply, from- 

 evolutions, in which continuity seems the dominant quality of the 

 focal elements. Considering the elements essentially characteristic of 

 cosmology, we earlier concluded that there are cosmologic revolu- 

 tions. Considering now the elements essentially characteristic of 

 science, I propose to show that evolutionary continuity is so over- 

 whelmingly dominant that the term "scientific revolution" is dis- 

 tinctly misleading. There are no scientific revolutions. Consider as 



