The revolutions postponed

Abstract

Philosophers of Science have developed sophisti-cated models for explaining how scientific revolu-tions are brought about and more generally how scientists deal with facts that contradict pre-existing assumptions and theoretical concepts. Likewise historians of science and sociologists of knowledge have produced comprehensive studies on how scientific breakthroughs have sparked social revolution and how social factors fostered or hampered scientific developments. However, scientific revolutions and scientific “progress” always seem to be at the center of at-tention. The equally important question of why sometimes new evidence and contradicting evi-dence fail to trigger a scientific revolution has been largely neglected though. Improving our understanding of “called off” or “postponed” rev-olutions not only contributes to analyses of suc-cessful scientific revolutions. Understanding how defenders of the status quo manage to suppress new information and ignore scientific facts is cru-cial to understanding scientific and political con-troversy. This contribution therefore seeks to out-line a conceptual model for probing into the “black box” of scientific revoltions. In addition it will outline a potential framework for analyzing the survival of neoclassic economic theory after the global financial crisis.