From paradigms to webs of belief

The history of philosophy of science shows a steady erosion of the idea that scientific knowledge is impersonal, cumulative, and methodologically unified.

Three converging arcs

1. Discontinuity — Kuhn establishes that progress is punctuated.
2. Personal involvement — Polanyi argues knowing is first-person.
3. Falsifiability and revision — Popper + Quine show scientific claims are web-like.

'We can know more than we can tell.' — Polanyi, 1966

Generated by the nested-deps trace.