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Newton's Opticks as Classic: On Teaching the Texture of Science

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2022

Dennis L. Sepper
Dennis L. Sepper*
Affiliation:
University of Dallas
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Extract

The opening paragraphs of Thomas Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions noted that different kinds of scientific writings have peculiar roles (Kuhn 1962). A textbook written for pedagogical purposes in a well-established scientific field gives a view of the field quite different from the actual history—an actual history that for the most part has to be reconstructed from the writings that originated the field. The originating writings correspond to the period of founding, to revolutionary science, whereas conventionalized textbooks belong to normal science.

This is almost too well known to be rehearsed again. Certain works found a science, like Newton's Opticks or Watson and Crick's original papers on the double-helical structure of DNA; others come in their wake, not just textbooks used for beginners but all the future texts that contribute to the paradigm project embodied in the originals.

Type
Part VIII. Science and Philosophy in the Classic Texts
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1994 , Issue 2: Volume Two: Symposia and Invited Papers 1994 , 1994 , pp. 258 - 265
Copyright
Copyright © 1995 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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