Interpreting the History of Evolutionary Biology Through a Kuhnian Prism: Sense Or Nonsense?
Interpreting the History of Evolutionary Biology through a Kuhnian Prism: Sense or Nonsense? Koen B. Tanghe Department of Philosophy and Moral Sciences, Universiteit Gent, Belgium Lieven Pauwels Department of Criminology, Criminal Law and Social Law, Universiteit Gent, Belgium Alexis De Tiège Department of Philosophy and Moral Sciences, Universiteit Gent, Belgium Johan Braeckman Department of Philosophy and Moral Sciences, Universiteit Gent, Belgium Traditionally, Thomas S. Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) is largely identified with his analysis of the structure of scientific revo- lutions. Here, we contribute to a minority tradition in the Kuhn literature by interpreting the history of evolutionary biology through the prism of the entire historical developmental model of sciences that he elaborates in The Structure. This research not only reveals a certain match between this model and the history of evolutionary biology but, more importantly, also sheds new light on several episodes in that history, and particularly on the publication of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (1859), the construction of the modern evolutionary synthesis, the chronic discontent with it, and the latest expression of that discon- tent, called the extended evolutionary synthesis. Lastly, we also explain why this kind of analysis hasn’t been done before. We would like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their constructive review, as well as the editor Alex Levine. Perspectives on Science 2021, vol. 29, no. 1 © 2021 by The Massachusetts Institute of Technology https://doi.org/10.1162/posc_a_00359 1 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/posc_a_00359 by guest on 30 September 2021 2 Evolutionary Biology through a Kuhnian Prism 1.
[Show full text]