Conceptual Change: Analogies Great and Small and the Quest for Coherence

Abstract

Historians and philosophers of science have, in recent decades, offered evidence in support of several influential models of conceptual change in science. These models have often drawn on and in turn driven research on conceptual change in childhood and in science education. This nexus of reciprocal influences is held together by several largely unexamined analogies and by several assumptions concerning analogy itself. In this chapter, we aim to shed some light on these hidden premises and subject them to critical scrutiny. Our critical survey suggests the following hypothesis: conceptual change in both childhood and science is driven by the epistemic subject’s quest for coherence.