Revolution in Science

ABSTRACT The distinguished professor emeritus of the History of Science at Harvard offers here a distillate of a career of research, reading, and reflection on revolutions in science. Distillate may seem an odd term for a book whose 30 chapters and 472 pages of text are supplemented by nearly 100 pages in small print of glosses and documented by more than 100 further pages of notes and bibliography. Cohen's wide-ranging encyclopedic scope encompasses Newton, Lavoisier, Kant, Darwin, Marx, Freud, Einstein, and many others. There is a mine of information for lay and professional readers and students of history. Yet, as a survey of case histories of major revolutions in science, the book presents little in the way of detailed analysis or broad interpretation that will seem new to historians of science in their respective areas of research interest.Cohen seeks to show that revolutions in science generally develop in four stages,