A Review of Some Theories of the Development of Scientific Knowledge Within the Western "Philosophy of Science"

Abstract

In recent decades, some Western philosophers have stressed the problem of the development of scientific theory within the "history of science," with special emphasis on the study of the philosophy of science as it appears in the history of modern science. In so doing they have studied the natural sciences as the process of the historical development of human knowledge of the natural universe and its lawfulness, and thus have sometimes termed such studies "theoretical dynamics." Among these, there have been several different schools of thought, the best known and most influential of which include: Popper's "falsificationism," Lakatos' "methodology of research programme," and Kuhn's theory of scientific revolution.