Scientific progress : a study concerning the nature of the relation between successive scientific theories

Featuring the Gestalt Model and the Perspectivist conception of science, this book is unique in its non-relativistic development of the idea that successive scientific theories are logically incommensurable. This edition includes four new appendices in which the central ideas of the book are applied to subatomic physics, the distinction between laws and theories, the relation between absolute and relative conceptions of space, and the environmental issue of sustainable development.

1. The Deductive Model.- 2. The Basis of the Logical Empiricist Conception of Science.- 3. The Basis of the Popperian Conception of Science.- 4. The Logical Empiricist Conception of Scientific Progress.- 5. The Popperian Conception of Scientific Progress.- 6. Popper, Lakatos, and the Transcendence of the Deductive Model.- 7. Kuhn, Feyerabend, and Incommensurability.- 8. The Gestalt Model.- 9. The Perspectivist Conception of Science.- 10. Development of the Perspectivist Conception in the Context of the Kinetic Theory of Gases.- 11. The Set-Theoretic Conception of Science.- 12. Application of the Perspectivist Conception to the Views of Newton, Kepler, and Galileo.- Appendix I: On Theoretical Terms.- Appendix II: The Gestalt Model of Scientific Progress.- References.

Featuring the Gestalt Model and the Perspectivist conception of science, this book is unique in its non-relativistic development of the idea that successive scientific theories are logically incommensurable. This edition includes four new appendices in which the central ideas of the book are applied to subatomic physics, the distinction between laws and theories, the relation between absolute and relative conceptions of space, and the environmental issue of sustainable development.