Chapter 4 Chapter Two: The Stages of the Scientific Revolution

In the past decade, historians and philosophers of science have produced a wave of analyzes of various kinds about scientific revolutions, or the ways in which science advances.Among these historians and philosophers of science are Feyerabend, Kuhn, Lakatos, Laudan, Popper, Shapir, Toulmin, and myself.Much of the voluminous literature published during this period presents a series of arguments for the internal consistency, broad applicability, or general application of one or another of these analyses, with a major part of the debate centered on T． S, Kuhn's thoughts.It is not necessary to agree with Kuhn in every detail to appreciate the true value of Kuhn's statements.Kuhn's discourses are unique in that they are all based on the concept of "paradigms" (1962; 1970; 1974; 1977).The so-called paradigm is a group of common methods, standards, interpretation methods or theories, or a common body of knowledge.In Kuhn's view, the so-called revolution in science is such a transformation from one paradigm to another. He believed that the crisis in the scientific situation made the emergence of a new paradigm inevitable, which led to the transformation of this paradigm. conversion.In one accepted paradigm, scientists' activities are called "normal science", and this activity usually consists of "puzzle solving", that is, increasing the stock of recognized knowledge.This normal science will continue until the anomaly appears.Abnormality eventually leads to a crisis, and with it a revolution that will produce a new paradigm.

A series of problems have emerged in the process of applying this model.One is that Kuhn uses the word "paradigm" in several different senses (Masterman 1970; Kuhn 1970); another is that not all revolutions emerge from crises ; there is also the problem that this whole set of models seems to work better in the physical sciences than in the biological sciences (Meyer 1976; Green 1971).Kuhn's analysis, however, has the real achievement of reminding us that the occurrence of revolutions is a regular feature of scientific change, and that revolutions in science have an important social Components - The new paradigm is accepted by the scientific community.Kuhn has already made a major contribution by shifting the discussion from the conflict between scientific ideas to the conflict between the scientists or groups of scientists who hold those ideas.In addition, he highlights certain features of revolutions, such as: the emergence of anomalies (which lead to the generation of crisis situations that lead to revolutions), the incompatibility between old and new barriers to meaningful dialogue across paradigms), and small revolutions in between revolutions, and so on.

The main difference between my own research and Kuhn's is that I have been discussing the fact that modern science has existed for four hundred years: the witnesses who participated in the revolutionary changes that occurred in science during these four hundred years What are the attitudes of the writers and contemporary analysts?This approach sees the concept of revolution as a complex, historically changing whole - necessarily influenced by revolutionary theory and events in the political sphere - rather than simply An idea of ​​how scientific change occurs.I have also tried, whenever possible, to juxtapose contemporaries' views on the Revolution with those of later historians and scientists, including those of our own time.My discernment of revolutions in science.Primarily based on examination of historical evidence rather than on whether they fit into a fixed category (see Chapter 3).Its first step is to examine the patterns of origin and development of those revolutionary ideas in science, and in this way I have dealt with Newton's revolutionary sexual innovation.The next step is to examine the fine-grained structure of scientific revolutions, and as I do here, I take as a point of departure the origins of new ideas or theories, or new systems (or paradigms), and trace their publication and popularization The process of dissemination, in the end, delineates clearly those stages which are accepted by the scientific community, that is, which lead to the recognized revolution.

How do we know that a revolution has happened?There are two types of standards for this.One is derived from logical analysis according to strict definitions, the other from historical analysis.There have been many important revolutions in science, such as the Newtonian revolution, the Darwinian revolution, the Einstein revolution, the chemical revolution, and in recent years the molecular biology revolution and the revolution in the earth sciences, etc., which have been proved to be based on these two criteria. revolutionary.They all pass the tests of revolution that I gave in Chapter 3.My purpose in this chapter is to examine the successive phases which I have found to constitute the characteristic sequence of scientific revolutions, and the role of witnesses and contemporary analysts involved in documenting such revolutions. role played.Revolutions do occur in science, and I take this to be a known fact, although I realize that there are those who don't believe it, and even among those who do, there is no consensus as to which events in the development of science constitute revolutions .

From Revolution in Thought to Revolution in Writings In the course of studying a large number of revolutions, I have found that in all scientific revolutions there are four main stages, which are clearly identifiable and successive.The first stage I call it "ideological revolution", or "revolution within oneself".When a scientist (or a group of scientists) invents a fundamental solution to an important problem or problems, or discovers a new way of using information (sometimes making the information available far beyond existing boundaries), when he (or they) proposes a new framework of knowledge within which existing information can be expressed in an entirely new way (thus leading to a kind of anticipation that no one had expected) , or when a set of concepts that change the character of existing knowledge is introduced or a revolutionary new theory is proposed, the first stage of revolution occurs.In short, the first stage of this revolution is a process that can always be found at the beginning of all scientific revolutions and is completed by one or several scientists.It consists of the creative activity of an individual or a group, which usually does not interact with the rest of the community of scientists.It works entirely within itself.Of course, such innovations also emerge from the matrix of existing science, and are often always a fundamental shift in existing scientific thinking.Moreover, it shows a close relationship with certain principles of generally accepted philosophy, with the scientific models and standards of the time.But that creative activity which manifests itself in the new science as having a revolutionary potential is often done in private or alone.

New patterns or discoveries are always recorded as items in diaries or notebooks.Or recorded or recorded in the form of a letter, a set of short essays, a report or a summary of a detailed report, etc., they may eventually be published and published as an article or a book.This is the second stage of the revolution - to a new approach.A belief in a concept or theory.Usually, this stage consists of writing out the research program and, perhaps, like Lavoisier, stating that its results will be "destined" (cf. Gluck 1975, User brings a revolution to physics and chemistry).Still, this revolution of faith is taking place in private.

Every revolution in science begins entirely as an intellectual activity of one scientist or group of scientists, yet a successful revolution—one capable of infecting other scientists or affecting the course of the future of science—must not Avoid informing colleagues verbally or in writing.For revolutions that take place in science, the initial phases of the revolution of ideas and the phases of the revolution of belief are private, but they inevitably lead to the public phase: the dissemination of ideas to friends, colleagues, colleagues, and subsequently throughout science. spread across the border.Today, the beginning of this third stage can take the form of a phone call, a letter, a discussion with friends or closest colleagues, or a group discussion in one's laboratory or laboratory meeting, followed by a more formal presentation at a traditional symposium in the laboratory or at one of the scientific conferences.If there is no strong opposition from peers, or if the critics or the authors of the scholarly report do not find fundamental flaws themselves, then this initial communication may lead to a situation where it is not openly but informally The publication circulates and, perhaps, someone proposes to publish it formally as a scientific paper or a monograph. The term "revolution in the treatise" precisely describes this third stage; the stage in which an idea or set of ideas has begun to circulate widely among the members of the scientific community.

A revolution in thought often does not end until scientists put their thoughts into words.Newton's important contribution to celestial mechanics is a famous example. In 1679, in correspondence with Robert Hooke, Newton learned of a new method of analyzing planetary motion, and then he used this method to solve the problem that planets follow elliptical orbits that could not be explained by the law of area at that time. The cause of the movement question.He then put his preliminary discoveries into writing, although (as far as we know) he did not write out his thoughts and their consequences in full.Until Halley (August 168) came to ask about forces and planetary orbits, Newton did not even publicly admit that he had made such amazing progress.Later, Newton compiled his results into a rich and detailed report, and, at Halley's suggestion, Newton registered his results with the Royal Society in November 1684, so that the pioneering rights of his invention could be be protected.Halley was well aware that, before Newton, no one had presented a new and revolutionary analysis of the forces that caused the motion of the planets.However, shortly after Newton had just prepared that paper for Halley and the Royal Society, that is, shortly after he had transformed his revolution in private thought into a revolution in public writing during the first months of 1685, Newton Building on his remarkable achievement, he discovered that the sun and each planet always interact gravitationally with each other, so that each planet acts both on the other and on the other. Being acted upon by other planets - this is the most important step on the way to the invention of the concept of gravitation, which was the basis of Newton's scientific revolution (cf. Cohen 1981; 1982).

Revolutions in science can fail in any of these first three stages.Perhaps the private literature of an inventor or discoverer has been left in the archives for a long time and has been covered with dust, and at this time it is too late to use these ideas to cause a revolution. too late.Had authors decided early on to send their discoveries to print, or otherwise make them widely available, a revolution might have occurred.There are two such examples in Thomas Harriot's (1560-1621) unpublished treatises on astronomy, mathematics, and physics, and in the mathematical manuscripts of Isaac Newton (1642-1727), which What could have been a huge scientific advance did not happen until more than three centuries later because the material was not published.I do not mean to suggest that if Harriot's discoveries in astronomy and physics (Shirley 1981) or Newton's new inventions in mathematics (Newton 1967) were to be published, they would necessarily cause a revolution.Suffice it to say that both of these examples show that great scientific advances are likely to fail simply because they go unnoticed until the sophisticated research programs of our time are carried out more than three centuries later. Unleash their revolutionary potential.

In some cases, revolutions may not have failed, as in Harriot's and Newton's cases, because scientists failed to get their work published.An example of this can be found in Evariste Galois's fundamental work in algebra (group theory).Galois (181-1832) did put his achievements into writing and sent them to the French Academy of Sciences for publication, but they were not acknowledged.Galois was killed in a duel before he had time to organize all his mathematical discoveries and research projects so that he could write them all up.The time given to him by his life was only enough for him to complete a short paper to explain the ideas of group theory he founded; those treatises that might have convinced his contemporaries at the time and might have caused a mathematical revolution have never been able to complete. Finish.

The experience of René Descartes (1596-1650) illustrates yet another delay in the progress of the revolution at the stage of public dissertation. In 1633 he put aside the radical manuscript of the Cosmology, whose main topic was cosmogony, which contained the first complete formulation of the general laws of inertia.He had just heard that Galileo and Copernicus had been convicted of astronomy, and he could not imagine how his Cosmology, which contained Copernican astronomy, could be published at this time?He even concealed the physiology part of the work "On Man", because he could not imagine separating the discussion of life science from the Copernican theory on which it was based.Even so, the Cartesian revolution was not completely and permanently buried, because after Descartes died, the part of the book "Cosmology" related to cosmology and physiology was published.In addition to this, Descartes continued to write another of his works, "Principles of Philosophy", and published this work; in this book, he expounded the law of inertia and some of his views on cosmology. ; however, the powerful tools to bring about this revolution were deprived for a while. From revolution in writings to revolution in science Even if a scientist's work is published, a scientific revolution will not happen until a sufficient number of other scientists come to believe in the theory or discovery contained in it and begin to do their own scientific work in a new and revolutionary way. occur.At this moment, the only means by which a scientific revolution can be brought about is the open communication of the intellectual achievements of a scientist or a group of scientists.This is the fourth or final stage of every scientific revolution. According to the history of science, many revolutionary ideas never made it past the stage of publication.Hypnotism is a good example.Mesmer had proposed a revolutionary system of medical "science" that was relevant to his medical practice.Although he won a large following among laymen (Darnton 1974) and among certain converted physicians, Mesmer's concepts and methods were eventually rejected by the medical and scientific research establishment because of these The agency found that these concepts and methods had no scientific value.They cannot confirm the existence of the hypnotic "flow" that animal magnetism says. In this century, many revolutionary fields of "phenomena" have similarly been rejected because scientific critics have been unable to find a real basis for their existence. The N-ray discovered in France in 1903 is one of them.These rays attracted great attention in the scientific community, and their discoverer, René-Prosper Blondeau, was famous for a while, but then notorious again.For it turned out that N-rays existed only in the minds of their discoverers, and some other scientists who were willing to believe in them apparently only temporarily suspended their normal scientific skepticism in their minds (Ross Modak 1972; Nye 1980 ).The same is true of fertility radiation discovered in the Soviet Union in the 2020s.It is assumed that this radiation consists of rays emitted by growing plants or other organisms that penetrate quartz but not glass.Hundreds of papers have been published on this exciting and revolutionary new question at the interface of plant physiology and radiation physics.In the end, however, precise experiments proved that these rays do not exist.In another such failed revolution, Paul Kammerer announced in Vienna that he had demonstrated the inheritance of acquired traits. In 1926, the specimen of the toad mating that he might have proved that acquired traits could be inherited was adulterated; he injected ink under the toad's skin. These examples (with the possible exception of Kammerer and his adulterated specimens; cf. Koestler 1971) illustrate that self-deception and the excitement of a large following can almost turn a revolution in treatise into a scientific revolution in.To some extent these fall under the category of "marginal" or even "sick" sciences (Langmere 1968; Rostand 1960), but this is not necessarily what a failed scientific revolution is - although it is often difficult to distinguish What's overly aggressive and what's morbid.On the whole, Langmeer explained, "dishonest behavior is rare." Scientists can also be "led astray by the interplay of subjective impressions, unrealistic delusions, or thresholds of perception as to what human beings can do on their own." This ignorance of what to do allows them to fool themselves into the wrong outcome." Two aborted revolutions, one in Velikovsky's cosmophysics of radiation and the other in polymerizing water, illustrate the difficulty of the problem.Emmanuel Velikovsky seeks to revolutionize physics with a radical set of ideas about how the solar system came to be in its current state.Part of his revolutionary theory: According to the Bible and other early records, Venus repeatedly collided with Earth and Mars just a few thousand years ago; at the time, Venus was a comet.Needless to say, Velikovsky's ideas contradicted fundamental laws of dynamics and gravity.He believed that electricity and magnetism overcame gravity when the planets met.Although his radical ideas were widely disseminated, especially in some published publications, they were not recognized by the scientific community.In fact, they have some serious opinions, and even a large number of opposition forces have emerged. In 1973, there was a debate at a meeting of the American Federation for the Advancement of Science.Five scientists (including Carl Sagan) attacked the planetary collision theory; only Velikovsky himself defended it (see Goldsmith 1977; Sagan 1979).In an opinion piece on the matter in the New York Times on December 2, 1979 (two weeks after Velikovsky's death), Robert Festro cited Velikovsky's Based on three prophecies that have been confirmed, there are seven other important prophecies that have been directly refuted.He said with regret that the "problem" is nothing else, because "in our lifetime, there is nothing more exciting than witnessing a revolution in scientific thinking." However, "unfortunately, ’, he concluded, “the evidence does not support this possibility.” Polymerized water, originally called "abnormal water", was discovered in 1961 by a Russian chemist working at a small provincial scientific research institute; a famous Russian physical chemist Boris V.Deryatin, head of a large team at a prestigious institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences, took over the research almost immediately (see Franks 1981).This liquid is created from ordinary water, but it shares almost none of the properties of water as we know it: It has a different boiling point than water and a different freezing point.In an article in the June 27, 1969 issue of Science, America's leading scientific journal, the authors presented spectroscopic evidence to support the view that the properties of these substances "are no longer What are the anomalies? They are, precisely, a newly discovered substance or properties of water of aggregation. "This aggregation requires" a previously unrecognized bonding process in order to construct a A system containing only hydrogen and oxygen atoms." At first, Western scientists did not pay much attention to this discovery.But soon, research on polymerized water began in Great Britain; later, large-scale research began in the United States, accompanied by many seminars, supported by millions of dollars in funding from the US Department of Defense.For one of the people reviewing the research bids wrote to the Air Force Research Directorate that "this type of work will lead to a revolution in all of chemistry, including that part that has a lot to do with the Air Force." (Frank Sri Lanka 1981, 186) the famous British crystallologist J. D．Bernard once hailed the polymerization of water as "the most important physico-chemical discovery of the century" (ibid., 49). It didn't take long for research papers on polymerized water to be published in some of the more famous scientific journals like a tidal wave; in November 1970, Deliatin published in the prestigious "Scientific American" magazine A note on this "ultra-dense water".This newfound intrinsic meaning has also prompted some thought.In the widely read and authoritative British journal Nature (1969, 224:198), a professor in Pennsylvania warned that if "at the expense of the outside world, under all conditions, At the expense of ordinary water, (water) polymer state appears, "then, life on the earth may be completely extinct. "Aggregation of water on Earth may turn Earth into an exact replica of Venus." He concluded that extreme caution must be exercised, because "once the aggregated core is dispersed in the soil, nothing can be done." Of course, there is no shortage of skeptics, some quite outspoken.They advised the Naval Office of Scientific Research, the Air Force, and the National Science Foundation not to use financial support to support polymerized water research, lest it end up looking ridiculous.In a letter to Science (1970, 168:1397) entitled "The 'Polymerized Water' Is Incredible," Joel R.Hildebrand, a veteran of the American physical chemistry community, expressed the skepticism of many members of the scientific community about the existence of polymeric water.It was finally shown that those properties of aggregated water, homogeneous (Franks 1981, 136) "are the product of a patchwork of different types and levels." An editorial in Nature stated dismayed: "Several experimenters have devoted themselves to went to work on the possibility that such a patchwork might explain most of their observations, but the experiment failed, and not a failure to boast about." The matter of polymerizing water has special significance for the revolution in analytical science, not only because it was a failed revolution but also because of the way in which it succeeded in the first place.Most of the scientific revolutions that fail are those that never get beyond the stage of what I call a revolution in my treatise.That is, they failed to generate enough support in the scientific community to reconstruct a scientific theory that would constitute a revolution.Other revolutions failed because experimental findings refuted them.Many of these revolutions simply failed the initial, valuable test.But the revolution in the case of polymerized water (at least for a while) was, if not quite a revolution, almost a scientific revolution in the strictest sense of the word. .A great deal of research has been done on this subject by many believers, and many research papers have been published, many of which have been advocated by some of the most important and well-known financial sponsors; Spread out in important magazines.It would take a revolution to explain how this unusual aggregation occurs in water.In this sense, perhaps, it is better to describe the discovery of polymerized water as a discovery that required a revolution (or a discovery that was revolutionary) than as a revolution in the strict sense of the term. appropriate.If the aggregation of water meant a revolution and not just the product of some other revolution, one might argue that the revolution was almost as successful, despite a sizable proportion of the scientific community as strongly skeptical. years.Yet such skepticism, or even apparent hostility, is a regular feature of the early stages of any scientific revolution. There was no polymerized water revolution until the end, because rigorous experimental testing eventually required people to give up their belief in this polymerized water.It is understandable why many scientists must overcome their original skepticism and join the ranks of those who study polymeric water.This is because there is always a strong desire to plunge into the frontiers of science, to be part of a team working on a new and controversial cause.These researchers are less likely to engage in conspiracies to deceive their fellow scientists, but on the contrary, they are likely to deceive themselves because of their strong desire to obtain constructive results (cf. Zeeman 1970).Such deluded cases are numerous, and their history is a question well worth exploring for those who study the sociology of science, the psychology of science, and the nature of scientific revolutions.The rise and fall of the aggregated water event shows how people actually work in the laboratory under the pressure of today's fiercely competitive scientific system: what they do is not always consistent with the ideal pursuit of abstract truth. Consistent with the traditional image that has been formed for a long time. There is a natural resistance in any scientist to abandoning the accepted set of ideas on which to advance his professional work, and this often conflicts with the desire to take an active part in a revolutionary movement.Often, new and revolutionary scientific systems are met with resistance rather than enthusiasm.This is because maintaining the status quo is intellectually, socially, and even financially beneficial to every successful scientist (see Barber 1961).Of course, if every revolutionary new idea was welcomed with enthusiasm, the result might be chaos. Stubborn and unreasonable persistence in an argument is one aspect of resistance to scientific change, and this persistence is in fact a source of strength and stability.Many revolutions that have been tried or have been planned simply do not pass the test.Perhaps their predictions have not been proven, perhaps their experimental basis has been shown to be false or inappropriate, or perhaps, the theory itself has been revealed to be flawed.Why kill a science by adopting a newly proposed theory or method if it has no practical benefit?It is because of this severe test that many revolutionary scientific developments have been rejected.The scientific enterprise, distinct from the political and social spheres, recognizes the various steps taken by different scientists to legitimize the revolution; thus, the revolutionary movement is not illegal despite resistance from conservative forces in science, It does not go beyond accepted norms of scientific change.Moreover, the rejection of revolution in science is an orderly process that does not depend on any irresistible pressure. Of course, such systems don't always work to their full potential.A striking example of such a break in the development of scientific revolutions can be seen in the discovery of the fundamental laws of genetics.In the 1800s, Gregor Mendel discovered the fundamental laws of genetics.Mendel published his work in a published but little-known journal, and his papers are indeed included in bibliographic guides on the subject.However, it was neglected for half a century until 1900, when it was rediscovered almost simultaneously by Karl Collens, Eric Cermak, Hugo de Vriuse (Albay 1966).De Vriuse had come across this work of his illustrious predecessor, and he brought it to the attention of the scientific world.In Mendel published its solo.In the age of the closed papers, the scientific man was concerned with hereditary variation and fusion, not with fixity; the scientific community was unprepared for his discovery and ignored it.In a sense, Mendel was perhaps half a century ahead of his time. Those scientists who had been educated in the theory that the emission, propagation and absorption of light appeared as continuous wave phenomena apparently had the hardest time in 1905 to abandon this accepted theory of light and turn around to admit Einstein's " Instructive "Quantum Concept of Discontinuous Light.It must have been equally difficult for anyone raised on the belief that species of plants and animals are fixed when Darwin proposed the evolution of species in 1859.However, a radical theory may also make sense in some respects, which can quickly overwhelm favorability over older theories.Perhaps it has won some adherents by explaining some anomaly or foreseeing some unexpected new phenomenon; perhaps it has united separate or unrelated branches of science; or it has brought discussion to a degree of precision. , can even simplify the assumptions made at the time.Sometimes, a new theory gains support from a dramatic experiment or observation.For example, in 1907 Einstein predicted in his theory of general relativity that light rays would bend in a gravitational field, and this was actually demonstrated during a total solar eclipse in 1919.However, despite its confirmation, in the 40 or so years since then, general relativity has not been the focus of most scientists, except for a relatively small number of astronomers and a few interested in cosmological problems. Mathematicians develop it.It was only after World War II, some 40 years after the theory was proposed, that the problems of general relativity became of paramount importance in the practical research of many physicists and astronomers.Thus, even after the theory had been confirmed, there was a long delay from a revolution in treatises to a real revolution in physics on a large scale. The fact that Einstein published his paper on special relativity in 1905 provides clear evidence of the break between the revolution in the treatise and the revolution in science.The title of Einstein's thesis was "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies", and it was this problem that Max Born, a physicist at the University of Göttingen, was working on at the time.Borth was a member of a seminar taught by David Hilbert and Hermann Minkowski on the subject of "Electrodynamics and Optics of Moving Bodies".Born (1971) records that the students in this seminar "worked on the research papers of H. A. Lorenz, Henri Poincaré, G. F. Fitzgerald, Larmor, and others, But Einstein's name is not mentioned." After graduating in 1906, Born went to Cambridge University, where he listened to Joseph Lamour's lectures on the theory of electromagnetism and J. J．Thomson's lectures on the theory of the electron, however, "still have not heard the name of Einstein." Only later, in Breslau in 1907-1908, did Born learn from two young Knowing about Einstein's paper, two physicists, Fritz Reicher and Stanislaus Loria, suggested that he read it.He read it, "and was immediately impressed." Born recalls that Einstein was known only at the time as, "he was a civil servant at the Swiss Patent Office in Bern," which clearly shows that he Not a member of this seminar. In the same year that he published his work on special relativity, Einstein also presented his radical revision of Planck's concept of quantum in the Annals of Physics, an important scientific journal.Even so, until the 1920s, it failed to go beyond the stage of discussing revolution. R． A．Millikan conducted a series of experiments in an attempt to prove Einstein wrong.可是他发现，事实恰恰相反，爱因斯坦对量子理论大胆的重新阐述，确实预见到了实验所证实的光电效应定律。然而，他却尽其所能断然否认爱因斯坦对量子理论的修正是正确的。尽管在1913年，对于尼尔斯·玻尔有关新的原子模型的革命性建议来说，爱因斯坦的新概念有着重要的意义，但是，在这一年推荐爱因斯坦去柏林工作的时候，他的保证人们（其中也有普朗克）都感到，有必要为这位被推荐者在量子领域中的想入非非表示歉意。从这个事实中可以看出，爱因斯坦的新概念并未得到普遍承认。 有时候，由于革命的科学家缺乏正统的凭证，论著中的革命也许就不能转变成一场科学中的革命了。对于已被确立的科学专业而言，出自该专业队伍之外而对它所做的那些根本性修正，科学家们对之总是不屑一顾。毫无疑问，维利科夫斯基及其思想最初遭到敌视，在很大程度上是由于这个事实：他本人并非是某个公认的科研部门的成员，他并不是某所大学、某个研究所或某个工业实验室的工作人员；他是一位非专业人员，一位业余爱好者。此外，他最初是在《哈珀斯杂志》一篇通俗性文章中而不是在一家严肃的科学杂志上提出他的思想的，这违反了正统的程序。当然，维利科夫斯基思想最终被拒绝的主要原因是：它们不正确，或者说，它们不精确，不是定量性的，以致于无法用观察或实验对它们真正地进行检验。 在100多年前的19世纪70年代，J． H．范托夫遇到了几乎与此完全相同的情况。当时，他提出了不对称的碳原子概念；这种带有革命色彩的思想修正了正统的化学理论，对此，大部分化学家持敌视态度，甚至未给予认真的考虑。德国伟大的有机化学家赫尔曼·科尔比也是批评者之一。他之所以不重视范托夫的思想，部分是因为，范托夫只不过是"乌得勒支兽医学校的"一个成员。科尔比写道，他不是去追求合乎逻辑的和"精确的化学研究"，对此他"毫无体验"，相反，范托夫"曾认为，骑上珀伽索斯相当方便（显然，兽医学校给他贷了款），而且可以相当方便地表明……在他飞往化学的帕尔纳索斯山顶峰的大胆飞行期间，原子是以什么方式在整个宇宙空间中自己聚集起来的"（科尔比1874，477；参见斯内尔德斯1974，3）。范托夫思想遭到反对的另一部分原因是由于这样一个事实：他曾把原子和分子描写成仿佛是具有物质实在性的，而这与大部分有机化学家的思想是大相径庭的，化学家们愿意使用原子和分子概念，但对它们是否真实存在却持怀疑态度。今天，范托夫有关不对称碳原子的革命性思想，业已被公认为是立体化学的基础了。 假如在通往科学革命的道路上有这么多的障碍，那么，任何新的理论或发现取得成功，或多或少都会令人感到惊讶。事实上，许多革命思想并非是以或许能被它们最初的提倡者们承认或接受的形式幸存下来的；相反，在以后的革命者的手中，它们均已发生了变化。举例来说，在lop年开普勒发表经过他本人彻底重建了的哥白尼天文学学说以前，哥白尼于1543年在其著作《天体运行论》中详尽阐述了宇宙学体系，并未对天文学产生十分重要的影响。我们可以觉察出，从开普勒那时起，天文学开始了一场革命，这场革命以牛顿的工作而告结束。然而，这场革命并非仅仅是一场被延误了半个世纪的哥白尼革命。确切地说，这门新的天文学根本不是真正意义上的哥白尼天文学（尽管人们仍然常常把它称作是"哥白尼革命"）。在重建中，开普勒基本上拒绝了哥白尼几乎所有的假定和方法；所保留下来的，只是其原来的中心思想，即太阳是固定的，而地球每年则在环绕太阳的轨道上运行一周，同时，它每天还自转一周。不过，这种观念也并不是哥白尼最早提出来的，这一点哥白尼很清楚；它来源于他的一位古代老前辈萨摩斯岛的阿利斯塔克。 在大陆漂移理论的历史中，显然也有与上述相同的变化现象。在魏格纳于第一次世界大战前发表他的革命性学说到这场革命于20世纪60年代最终被承认之间，我们又可以看到有着一段明显的历史间隔。不过，魏格纳所想象的是，各大陆曾经在海中像巨大的平底船似的分散地航行着或被推动着，它们就是这样在地壳上运动；而最终革命的发生则是基于海底扩张这一概念，即海底扩张使地壳的巨大断面（板块）以在一边增大、在另一边裂开的方式运动着。由于这些板块可能环绕着大陆的陆地块体，因此，它们的运动就引起了大陆的分离。与上述哥白尼革命的那个例子相同，在这场革命中，魏格纳理论中所保留下来的主要是这一思想：今天各大陆彼此相互所处的位置，与它们在地球形成时的情况并不相同。 失败的科学革命通常也就销声匿迹了。但一场政治革命或社会革命（1848年的那些革命和1905年流产的俄国革命）失败了，它仍然可能是一个很有意义的事件，它可以用来作为社会政治条件或问题的一个标志，值得历史学家们去重视（兰格1969；斯特恩1974；乌拉姆1981）。有些失败了的政治革命，其目的也许仍旧能在以后的革命时期在一定的程度上得以实现。然而，科学史家一般则不考虑革命的失败，除非它们是些"反常"科学的例子。其所以如此，也许是因为大多数科学史都是由科学家自己写的，他们对历史上真理的成功和发展阶段，比对历史中真理和谬误混杂时的兴衰沉浮阶段更感兴趣。