STEPHEN TOULMIN

CONCEPTUAL REVOLUTIONS IN SCIENCE*

I. I N T R O D U C T I O N

By now, most analytical philosophers are accustomed to putting their

thoughts about morals into a different box from their thoughts about
science. By doing this, however, one may conceal the fact that, at the
heart of both ethics and the philosophy of science, there lies a common
problem - the problem of evaluation. Human conduct can be rated as
acceptable or unacceptable, fruitful or misguided, can be approved of or
judged inadequate. But so can human ideas, theories, explanations. And
this is no simple play on words. In either case - whether moral or intel-
lectual - we can inquire about the standards, criteria or other consider-
ations involved in an evaluative appraisal, and about the bearing of those
'considerations' on the actual force and implications of the appraisal. So
it is worth asking ourselves, from time to time, whether ethics and
philosophy of science might not be more alike than they at present are.
One contrast between the two subjects concerns me particularly here.
I t the philosophical analysis of moral judgments, we happily accept an
'ecological' point of view. We know very well that we shall see the force of
moral evaluations, and understand why different criteria are relevant to
them in different situations, only if we think ourselves into the positions
of the men making the evaluations. Of course (we should say) a man
deciding beforehand what will be the right thing to do faces different
considerations from those which govern this subsequent judgment,
whether that course of action had in f a c t turned out well or badly: after
all, the situations - t h a t is, the contexts of judgment-are very different
in the two cases. And we are even open to the suggestion (explored by
Alasdair Maclntyre in a recent paper at Harvard) that the very system of
moral evaluation as a whole may have sociological and historical di-
mensions: that moral philosophy as a subject must be tackled with an eye
to the historical sociology of moral practices - since what even counts as a
'moral' judgment may vary as between the 8th-century Iceland of the

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 STEPHEN T O U L M I N

Sagas, the Athens of Pericles, and the contemporary Oxford of R. M.

Hare and Mrs. Foot.
The intellectual evaluations of the scientist are customarily discussed in
very different terms. The criteria of judgment relevant to scientific hy-
potheses are commonly explained in terms of an abstract, and quasi-
mathematical Schematization of 'inductive logic': the idea being (as I
understand it) that we need timeless and a-historical standards of validity
for checking the arguments" implicit in scientists' writings or the corre-
spondence between axiomatized theories and independently certifiable
facts. Nothing less will serve (on this view) as an acceptable theory of
confirmation or corroboration.
However, instead of spending any more time arguing against logical
empiricism, it will be more profitable for me to ask here: "What else is
possible? What else might the philosophy of science turn into?" So my
purpose in this paper will be to raise and clarify the questions which would
arise, if we succeeded in working out for 'scientific evaluation' an alter-
native analytical approach, having more of the 'ecological' character
already taken for granted in moral philosophy. And I shall try to show
how - if one embarks on this enterprise - one is driven back into the
position occupied a century ago by William Whewell, of regarding philos-
ophy of science as an extension, not of mathematical logic, but of the
history of scientific ideas.

II. R. G. C O L L I N G W O O D AND 'ABSOLUTE P R E S U P P O S I T I O N S '

Let me take as a starting-point certain ideas about the structure of

scientific theories put forward by R. G. Collingwood in his Essay on
Metaphysics (1940). This is a book whose significance has recently been
under-rated. Not surprisingly, one may say, for several kinds of reasons.
To begin with, Collingwood himself had little first-hand knowledge of the
natural sciences, and many of the examples he cited in the Essay were less
than convincing. (Too often, they were documented by reference to, say,
the popular writings of Alfred North Whitehead, rather than to authentic
scientific texts.) Again: by 1939, Collingwood had become a lone wolf at
an Oxford in full revolt against all forms of idealism. In addition, he was
under great personal strain - he had only four years to live - and his
reaction to the approach of a World War made him querulous about the

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supposed implications of his colleagues' views. So the positive arguments

of the Essay were interlarded with polemical attacks and rhetorical
caricatures; and, by the time the book actually appeared in print, some
of the victims were already soldiers in uniform. As a result, for reasons
quite beyond Collingwood's control, it provoked to begin with the same
tainted air as Ernest Gellner's subsequent attack on the dying John
Austin.
Rereading the book n o w - twenty-five years on, and in a new situation -
we can see it very differently. The idea that the task of conceptual analysis
may involve us, among other things, in a study of conceptual history,
begins to sound less strange; and we can be more open towards William
Whewell's program of studying the philosophy and the history of the
inductive sciences in parallel. So let me ignore the polemical aspects of
Collingwood's Metaphysics, and pick out from it the arguments which
(as I see it) pose the central problems o f conceptual evaluation and
choice in science.
Collingwood draws attention to a hierarchy in the questions and
propositions of the natural sciences. This is a hierarchy of a rather
different kind from that commonly discussed in books on inductive logic.
As Collingwood depicts them, the general and comprehensive principles
of a natural science are no t "major premises" of"universal propositions"
from which the specific and particular statements are to be inferred
deductively. That sort of structure is appropriate only within a mathe-
matical science whose basic concepts are fixed and determinate: most
typically, in one which is intellectually fossilized, like Euclidean geometry.
Rather, the specific statements and questions of a natural science rely for
their meaning and relevance on the general doctrines. As Collingwood puts
it, the specific propositions either "arise" or "do not arise", depending on
the general principles assumed; and the general doctrines are related to
them, not as axioms to entailed propositions, but rather as "presup-
positions" to consequential questions. The relevance and acceptability of
narrower concepts is thus referred to - and made contingent on - the
relevance and acceptability of broader concepts; and, in any given natural
science, the most general presuppositions of all define the basic concepts
and patterns of thought employed in our interpretation of that particular
aspect of nature, and, hence, the fundamental questions by which our
inquiries in that area are led forward.

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 STEPHEN TOULMIN

To give a familiar example: at the basis of classical 19th-century

physics lies a whole battery of tacit presuppositions, e.g., that the local
motion of bodies can be explained in abstraction from their colors and
smells, that determinate 'actions' or 'forces' can be identified corre-
sponding to all changes in linear velocity, and so on. These, as I under-
stand Collingwood, are the fundamental and general hypotheses or pre-
suppositions (the term 'hypo-thesis' is, after all, only the Greek counter-
part of the Latin 'sup-positio') on which the specific concepts of 19th-
century physics depended for a meaning; and, speaking for a moment as
an historian of science, I may say that this account of the matter makes
very good sense. If the general axioms of Newton's dynamics are
abandoned, then specific statements about forces and their effects on
motions are not just falsified: they cease to arise any longer in the way
they did before.
True: as stated in the Metaphysics, Collingwood's view is not without
difficulties. To begin with, his scientific shortcomings led him to choose
some unfortunate illustrations. One may allow (for instance) that the
most general presuppositions of a science will include some concerned
with the applicability or inapplicability in that science of simple cause•
effect patterns of explanation. But it is another matter to say, as Coiling-
wood does, that physics since the year 1650 has developed through three
successive phases, governed respectively by the Newtonian presup-
position that "some events have causes", the Kantian presupposition that
"all events have causes", and the Einsteinian presupposition that "no
events have causes". That is a pretty rough kind of history. Yet bad
illustrations need not ruin a good philosophical point. Collingwood was
right, I believe, to insist that the relevance and applicability of (say) the
concepts of 19th-century physics can be shown to depend on certain very
general assumptions, what he called "absolute presuppositions". ~ Par-
ticular dynamical explanations in classical physics presuppose the
Newtonian concept of inertia; the Newtonian concept of inertia presup-
poses the idea of an inertial principle of some kind; but beyond that we can
scarcely go. Such a general idea as that of inertia is 'constitutive of'
dynamics, in this sense: that, without some ideal of inertia, the whole
intellectual enterprise of dynamics would be at an end.
To go further: Collingwood was surely right, also, in one other claim,
namely, that the crucial intellectual choices in science have to do with

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changes in these basic assumptions. As such, these choices must be studied

with an eye to their historical background; that is, the process by which
explanatory ideals or absolute presuppositions succeed and displace one
another.
In his role as 'Collingwoodian metaphysician', a philosopher of science
must not merely "identify different constellations of absolute presup-
positions" underlying the various phases in the evolution of science, nor
merely "study their likenesses and unlikenesses". Most important of all,
it is his task "to find out on what occasions andby whatproeesses one such
constellation has turned into another". 2 This formulation has one residual
weakness: it leaves it still open to question whether 'absolute' presup-
positions can always be told for certain from 'relative' ones. Still, Coiling-
wood does bring one back t o the central problem of conceptual change
- and choice - in science: and that is my central problem here.
Having stated the problem of scientific change in this bare and general
form, Collingwood unfortunately stopped. The remainder of the Essay on
Metaphysics illustrates his thesis by describing temporal cross-sections
from the development of science and philosophy; but it does little to
characterize the occasions of change - still less, the processes of change -
by which the basic "constellations of presuppositions" develop. This gap
was so evident that a friend to whom he showed his draft manuscript
asked him what he believed such changes to be: surely he did not think of
them as mere "changes in intellectual fashion". And Collingwood felt
bound to include a reply in the form of a substantial footnote 3, which is
perhaps the most significant thing in the whole book. A change in
absolute presuppositions, he declared, "is the most radical change a man
can undergo, and entails the abandonment of his most firmly established
habits and standards of thought and action". Such changes happen, in
brief, because
the absolute presuppositions of a given society, at any given phase of its history,
form a structure which is subject to 'strains' of greater or less intensity, which
are 'taken up' in various ways, but never annihilated. If the strains are too great,
the structure collapses and is replaced by another, which will be a modification
of the old with the destructive strain removed.4
Such a modification, Collingwood added, is "not consciously devised but
created by a process o f unconscious thought".
Now this reply tells us a lot about Collingwood's own view, but at the

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same time forces us beyond it. For its effect is to sidestep the crucial issue.
It is all very well to talk of'strains' afflicting a structure of presuppositions;
but by what effects do these 'strains' betray themselves; and by what
criteria can we recognize when they have been 'removed'? Over such
questions as these, Collingwood is in some embarrassment. For notice:
the modification by which such a result is achieved cannot, on his own
account, be a fully straightforward or 'rational' argument. To adapt What
the Tortoise said to Achillesa: if the procedure were wholly rational, then
the old and new constellations of 'absolute' presuppositions would cease
to be 'courts of last appeal'. We should now have to introduce a 'super-
absolute' presupposition, for deciding whether, in any particular case, the
step from the older to the newer presuppositions was or was not a
'rational' step. The two sets of presuppositions which - by definition -
were initially said to be 'absolute' thus turn out to be "relative' to a higher
presupposition; and the elimination of 'strains' becomes a standard oper-
ation within an unchanging theoretical framework. To take this way out
would m e a n abandoning Collingwood's most distinctive contribution:
yet what alternative is there? To put changes in absolute presuppositions
down to "processes of unconscious thought" is scarcely good enough; and
elsewhere Collingwood simply likens the difficulties which arise over
absolute presuppositions to the 'social strains' arising within a culture,
society or civilization, and hints that in certain respects the intellectual
'strains' within our system of ideas may actually be linked with - even
epiphenomena o f - broader sociological or cultural crises. G
This conclusion should not wholly surprise us. At the deepest level of
all, Collingwood's account makes it impossible for conceptual changes
to be entirely rational: that being so, it is understandable if he was drawn
towards a causal account of such changes. There is some collateral evi-
dence which bears on this point. Collingwood's last years were a time,
not only of wa/, but also of personal crisis. Before his death, dark rumors
used to circulate that he had become a convinced Marxist. To opponents,
these rumors only confirmed their suspicion that psychological stress had
thrown him intellectually off balance; while, to his friends and sup-
porters, they caused at the time pained alarm. At our present stage,
however, we can take a calmer view. After all, an acceptance of certain
Marxist positions was entirely consistent with the argument of the Essay
on Metaphysics, and was in some ways a sequel to it. And in any event

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Collingwood deserves credit for having posed explicitly what is still the
unanswered question about conceptual evolution: namely, "How - on
what occasions, and by what processes - do our fundamental concepts
come to succeed one another as they do?"

Ill. T. S. KUHN AND 'SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTIONS'

During the last five years, this question has been taken up again and widely
discussed. This debate was initiated by professor T. S. Kuhn, now of
Princeton University. First in 1961, in a paper at Oxford on the role of
dogma in science ~, next in his book The Structure of Scientific Revo-
lutions s, and most recently in a symposium at Bedford College, London,
in 19659, Kuhn has expounded an explicit theory of scientific change,
designed to deal with Collingwood's problem. Or rather (as I shall argue)
he has expounded three successive theories of scientific change, for the
differences between his three accounts reflect a development in his ideas
which is profound, though never wholly explicit. If I am right, indeed,
Kuhn has by now moved so far from his original theory of 'scientific
revolutions' that we must look beyond his ideas, towards a new and very
different form of theory; and the value of discussing his views in this paper
lies in recognizing this way ahead.
One preliminary gloss is required. Collingwood insisted carefully, and
rightly, on a distinction which Kuhn blurs, and this has the effect of
making his theory ambiguous. We must begin by reinstating this dis-
tinction, and reformulating the theory accordingly. For Kuhn's whole
argument is built around a contrast between two types of scientific
change. During long periods of 'normal science', he argues, ideas in
physics (say) are dominated by the authority of a master-theory or
'paradigm': this determines what questions arise, what interpretations are
legitimate, and so on, for investigations in that field of inquiry, and the
scientists working within it form a 'school' very similar to a school of
artists. These 'normal' phases are separated by sudden and radical
transformations - what Kuhn calls "scientific revolutions" - which in-
volve the displacement of one master-theory (e.g., the mechanics of Galileo
and Newton) by another (e.g., the mechanics of Einstein and Heisenberg).
Now, Kuhn interprets this contrast between 'normal' and 'revolution-
ary' change in two alternative ways: sometimes as a philosophical analysis,

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sometimes as a sociological hypothesis; and the use he makes of Wittgen-

stein's term "paradigm" is correspondingly ambiguous. At times his
argument is this: that the intellectualfunction of a fundamental conceptual
scheme, such as the dynamical system of Newton's Mathematical Princi-
ples of Natural Philosophy, is to determine what patterns of theory are
available, what questions meaningful and what interpretations admissible,
for a physicist working within the Newtonian tradition - and that, for so
long as this theory retains intellectual authority, a physicist may reasonably
treat its principles as the theoretical court of last appeal - that is, as
'paradigmatic'. (Once the theory loses authority, the whole edifice of
physics must be reconstructed on a new foundation.) At other times, his
argument is this: that secondary, derivative scientists see less of the whole
picture than the primary, original workers who are their masters. They
are accordingly liable to narrow their minds, admitting as meaningful
questions, legitimate interpretations or acceptable patterns of explanation
only those questions, interpretations, and patterns supposedly sanctioned
by the example of the master within whose school they work. But, as
things turn out, this failing is quite advantageous, since the magisterial
authority exerted by (say) Newton in his Opticks provides guidelines with-
in which it is expedient for lesser men to be confined. (Notice that, on the
first, philosophical interpretation, it is the pattern of theory itself which
constitutes the paradigm and carries the authority: on the second, socio-
logical interpretation, the writings in which the theory is expounded
- Newton's Opticks, for instance - are described as the paradigm, and the
authority which they exert is the personal influence of the man, rather
than the intrinsic authority of his ideas.)
The first, philosophical thesis closely resembles Collingwood's earlier
position: "absolute presuppositions" now reappear as assumptions about
the ultimacy of particular 'paradigms', while Kuhn's sequence of "crises
and revolutions" corresponds to Collingwood's sequence of"strains and
modifications". Yet at the outset - notably, in the Oxford paper on
'Dogma in Science' - Kuhn dearly saw himself as doing something more
than merely repeating CoUingwood's philosophical move. At that time,
he was happy to run the philosophical and sociological theses in double
harness; and even in his latest phase he is unwilling to abandon the socio-
logical interpretation entirely. Recall, for a start, the very title of the
Oxford paper: by emphasizing the value of dogma in science, Kuhn was

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claiming not merely that overall patterns of theory function 'paradig-

matically', for there need be nothing 'dogmatic' about building a scientific
theory on a secure paradigmatic basis: he was implying, further, that
narrow-mindedness itself can be expedient for the development of science.
And at this point the differences between his various illustrations become
significant. Whereas (it can be argued) the dynamical theory set out in
Newton's Principia retained a legitimate intellectual authority right
through the 19th century, the influence of the Opticks was already'having
a narrowing effect by the late 18th century, and its continued authority
was little more than the magisterial dominance of a greater mind over
lesser ones. So, if we do cite both works to support a single theory of sci-
entific change, we must candidly admit the differences between them, rath-
er than treating them both as illustrating one and the same phenomenon.
Since 1961, Kuhn has dropped the word 'dogma', and has concentrated
on the philosophical idea of a 'paradigm' as a theory having intellectual
authority in its own right. (Indeed, in his third account he comes close to
equating the term 'paradigm' with the phrase 'fundamental theory'.)
Even so, a further definite change can be seen between the positions set
out in his 1962 book and that of the 1965 symposium. In the book, the
distinction between 'normal' and 'revolutionary' changes in science was
dean, sharp and well-defined. A "scientific revolution" (Kuhn explained)
involved a complete change of intellectual clothes 10, one so profound that
a scientist working within the new paradigm will share no common
theoretical concepts with a colleague still committed to the old one, and
so, will not be able to communicate with him about their common
subjects of research, and will even end up by 'seeing' the world in quite
different patterns. (Notice how Kuhn's idealist theory of knowledge leads
him on to an idealist theory of perception.) During 'normal' science, by
contrast, there need be no such mutual incomprehension or radical
transformation in our Gestalt of experience: normal science is essentially
consolidatory, and those engaged on it work within a shared framework
of fundamental concept. But by 1965 even the distinction between normal
and revolutionary change was becoming blurred. Critics have convinced
Kuhn that profound conceptual changes are going on repeatedly, in all
the sciences: to this, his reaction is to describe all, or most scientific
change as a sequence ofsmallerrevolutions, or micro-revolutions, thus turn-
ing the development of scientific theory into a "revolution in perpetuity".

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What is the significance of this new change? The considerations which

forced Kuhn in this direction have long been familiar to political scien-
tists, geologists, and students of other historical sciences. Once upon a
time (for instance) political historians themselves were tempted to think
of the term 'revolution' as something more than a handy taxonomic label.
Steady constitutional change seemed to represent intelligible continuity:
'revolutions', by contrast, were disruptions of normalcy, and introduced
discontinuities which could not be explained in the same kind of terms as
normal political development. But, with experience, it has become clear
to political historians that nothing is achieved by saying, "... and then
there was a revolution", as though that exempted one from the need to
give any historical analysis of a more explicit kind. To do only that is not
to perform the historian's proper intellectual task, but to shirk it. Even
in political revolutions, the break is never absolute. Continuities of law,
custom and administrative procedure always survive, and normally out-
weigh, revolutions in the patterns of allegiance and authority. (The
French inheritance-system, the U.S. system of common law, and the
Russian habit of providing escorts for foreign tourists, all survived largely
unchanged through a 'revolution'.) So, nowadays, statements about the
occurrence of political revolutions are accepted only as posing deeper ques-
tions about "the occasions on which and the processes by which" supreme
authority changes hands in a 'revolutionary' way. Political revolutions can-
not, after all, be distinguished absolutely from normal political processes.
In his 1962 book, as we saw, Kuhn likewise began by painting a picture
of 'scientific revolutions' as absolute and complete. In such a revolution,
Newthink swept aside Oldthink entirely - so much so that, necessarily,
the reasons for making the change from Oldthink to Newthink could be
explained within neither system, and a Newthinker could not converse
intelligibly about theoretical problems with an Oldthinker. Yet this
doctrine always exaggerated the degree of change involved in the revision
of a theory. Even in the sole case that Kuhn documented fully (the
switch from Newton's to Einstein's physics) matters never quite reached
that stage. Indeed, many theoretical physicists lived through the change,
and could afterwards explain quite articulately the considerations which
moved them to change from a classical to a relativistic position. And these
'considerations' were in the nature of 'reasons' or 'justifications', not
merely 'motives' or 'causes'. They did not say only, "Einstein was so very

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persuasive" or "It was as much as my job was worth", but sketched the
arguments whose authority sanctioned their change of standpoint. So,
primafacie at least, the switch from Newton to Einstein represented for
those involved something more than a 'conversion' to a novel point of
view. Failing this example, the revolutionary arm of Kuhn's original
dichotomy proves to have no real-life illustrations.
Meanwhile, the idea of 'normal' science also turns out to be over-
simplified. Theorizing is rarely if ever confined within the precise con-
ceptual limits of earlier science, is rarely if ever pure consolidation. Some
genuinely novel element of interpretation is nearly always involved; and,
to that extent, incomprehension is always possible; for scientists having a
stake in the preservation of earlier ideas may find the innovations perverse,
and actually unintelligible. So, even within so-called normal science, there
is room for something like the breakdown in communication supposedly
characteristic of revolutionary change. If this partial incomprehension
- of which half-a-dozen examples could readily be given from the last
twenty years of science - is treated as evidence that 'normal' change, too,
has something 'revolutionary' about it, Kuhn's 1962 distinction collapses
entirely, and gives place to the 1965 doctrine, according to which theo-
retical micro-revolutions are going on continuously. Instead of 'scientific
revolutions' being the direct antithesis of 'normal' scientific change - and
that, after all, was the very heart of the original thesis - the new micro-
revolutions now become the units of change during normal and revo-
lutionary phases alike. Once this is accepted, however, the picture of
scientific revolutions as too profound and comprehensive to be explained
within either Oldthink or Newthink has implicitly been abandoned. As in
the political sphere, so in the scientific: by dubbing a change 'revolution-
ary', we do not escape responsibility for explaining "the occasions on
which and the processes by which" it came about.

IV. T H E P R O B L E M S OF C O N C E P T U A L E V O L U T I O N

This examination of Collingwood and Kuhn has shown both men facing
embarrassment over the same two problems. In the first place, any
attempt to characterize scientific development as an alternation of sharply
distinct 'normal' and 'revolutionary' phases implies something false:
namely, that a pattern of theoretical ideas is transmitted from a master to

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his pupil either perfectly (as in Kuhn's normal science, where all the pupils
do is to add fresh details to an existing pattern) or not at all (as in his
original 'revolutions', where the breach between old and new was abso-
lute). In actual fact, the degree of replication involved in this transmission
is always more or less incomplete, except in a subject which has become
entirely fossilized and scholastic.
The second unresolved problem for Collingwood and Kuhn is this: al-
though they differ from the logical empiricists in almost every other respect,
the two men find it hard to construe changes in absolute presuppositions
or paradigms as the product of rational considerations. Collingwood ended
by hinting that these changes were most likely by-products of deeper so-
cialcauses; while Kuhn used his 1965 paper to contrast Karl Popper's con-
ception of a Logik der Forschung with his own inquiries into the 'psycholo-
gy' of research. So, even after Kuhn and Collingwood have both done their
work, our initial problem remains: that is, to identify the precise locus of
rational choice within the fundamental process of conceptual development.
At this point, I shall leave my exegesis of Collingwood and Kuhn, and
start raising some Queries or Working Hypotheses on my own account.
These Hypotheses will bring us back to our starting-point: that is, to a
view of conceptual change in science which throws some fight on the
'ecology' of scientific choice and evaluation. Despite everything, we are
by now a little nearer to our destination. For when Kuhn comes round to
talking about scientific thought as involving a revolution in perpetuity,
whose units of change are certain intellectual micro-revolutions, this
suggestion can be helpful, on one condition: that one makes it absolutely
clear in precisely what sense these micro-revolutions are to be regarded as
units of change. And what I shall do in the rest of this paper is to indicate
how a more refined analysis could be built up, if we insisted at this point
on one further distinction.
Once again, a 'micro-revolution' in scientific theory might be either of
two rather different things. It might be one of the specific conceptual
novelties proposed for consideration within a given science at a particular
time - novelties which will circulate among the scientists concerned for a
few weeks, months, or years, before being definitely accepted or rejected;
or it might, alternatively, be one of the much smaller sub-class of theo-
retical novelties which actually establish themselves within the tradition
of a science, and thereby modify the tradition. So this is my first Hypothe-

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sis: when we consider the conceptual changes taking place within any
intellectual tradition, we must distinguish between (i) the units of variation
or conceptual variants circulating within that discipline at any particular
time, and (ii) the units of effective modification, that is, those few variants
which become incorporated into the conceptual tradition of the discipline.
We need, in a word, to discuss the development of traditions under two
distinct heads: (i) innovation - how the bearers of an intellectual tradition
think up conceivable ways ahead from their current positions, and (ii)
selection - how they decide in what respects to chose from among these
innovations, and so modify the tradition in passing it on.
This suggestion brings me to my second Hypothesis: when we study
conceptual development within any tradition, we are concerned with a
process involving the selective perpetuation of preferred intellectual
variants, and hence with a process having certain genuine Darwinian
parallels; and we must accordingly be prepared to look and see for our-
selves by what criteria specific professional groups have exercised these
preferences at specific times. Though these criteria may often have been
made explicit, Collingwood is probably right in hinting that - at times of
peculiar intellectual stress - they may remain unformulated; so that one
could meaningfully speak of new ideas displacing old ones, in these cases,
as a result of "a process of unconscious thought".
If we reformulate the problem of intellectual evolution in these terms,
we are (I believe) on the way to resolving some of the old perplexities
about the relationship between external and internal factors in the
development of our intellectual traditions, both in science and elsewhere.
For it now becomes essential to distinguish at least three different aspects
of this development, and to consider separately how far each aspect is
responsive either to internal or to external factors. The sheer quantity of
innovation going on in a given field at any time is one thing; the pre-
dominant direction in which these innovations are tending is another; and
the selection criteria, in the light of which certain of them are chosen for
incorporation into the tradition, are yet a third. Once these distinctions
are clearly made, it will be naive to ask any longer, e.g., whether the devel-
opment of scientific theories can be explained entirely as a product of
internal factors (specialized problems giving rise to solutions, which pose
new specialized problems, and so on...), or whether the influence of ex-
ternal factors plays the determining part (as in J. D. Bernal's alleged con-

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nection between Darwinism and laissez-faire capitalism). Instead, we

must now recognize that different aspects of conceptual development in
any science will respond to quite different groups of factors.
As a hint: one can plausibly relate the volume of intellectual innovation
in a science in a particular social context to the opportunities provided for
doing original work in that science; hence, the rate of innovation will be
substantially responsive to factors external to the science. The selection
criteria by which conceptual innovations are appraised, by contrast, will
be very largely a professional, and so a predominantly internal matter,
related to the immediate technical problems of the science: on some views,
indeed, they should be entirely an internal matter, though this may well be
less a fact than an ideal, and possibly not even a completely realizable
ideal.11 Finally, the direction in which conceptual innovations are pre-
dominantly moving in a particular science is something which involves a
complex mixture of factors, internal and external; as formal logicians have
emphasized - somewhat scornfully - the sources of novel hypotheses are
highly varied and may be quite remote from the detailed problems in hand.12
(Hence the punch behind their insulting use of the word 'psychologism'.)
By this time, we are back where we began. If in real life the process of
intellectual change needs to .be thought of in terms of the categories
tradition, innovation, and selection, then what at the outset I called
'intellectual evaluation' has an identifiable niche in that developmental
process. So let me offer you my third Hypothesis: In generalizing about
the merits of rival scientific theories - as of any other creative innovation -
we should concern ourselves with the selection criteria which in fact guide
the choices men make between the available conceptual innovations at any
operative time. And to this let me add a corollary: that the criteria
legitimately invoked in a given, specific scientific situation are likely to be
dependent on the context, just as much as the criteria of moral rightness
and wrongness before and after an action. To some degree, they are even
likely to be subject to progressive refinement in the course of history, as
Alasdair MacIntyre argued in the case of moral evaluations, and as Imre
Lakatos has demonstrated for mathematical standards of proof.

CONCLUSION

To sum up: if these Hypotheses prove their worth (and it must be proved),

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then conceptual change will not be something that just 'happens', and
hence a 'sociological phenomenon'. Rather, it will be the product of
choices between alternative conceptual variants; and the available variants
facing scientists in any tradition and generation will provide the back-
ground against which we must understand and analyze the criteria of
scientific evaluation. Accordingly, the contrast between moral and intel-
lectual evaluation from which we began is needless: in both areas, the
criteria of evaluation must be related to the situation in which they apply
'ecologically', rather than being imposed a priori.
The resulting account will have certain advantages, but these will be
purchased at a certain price. The obvious advantage is one of actualitd: if
the selection criteria are abstracted from a study of the actual process of
conceptual change, their relevance to a science will be manifest, and we
need not feel that perplexity which can arise over formalized systems of
inductive logic - for lack of any clear indication how the logician's
standards ofjud~'.~ent are to have any bearing on the appraisal of science-
as-it-is-actually-done. On the other hand, some philosophical ambitions
will have to be moderated. If we are content to formulate explicitly the
criteria of intellectual choice infact operative in a science, then the account
we end up with will be fundamentally descriptive. This has two impli-
cations. First, philosophers can no longer dictate the principles to which
scientists ought to conform in their theorizing, but can contribute to the
adVancement of science only by entering the debate on equal terms with
all other participants; and secondly, conformity to the resulting standards
of judgment will not guarantee scientific progress. A choice between the
available conceptual variants at any time, made with an eye to the best-
established selection criteria, need not in every case result in a modified
theory which is the best conceivable.
But, once again, these limitations only bring philosophy of science into
line with ethics. Ever since the 18th century it has been a standing problem
of ethics that acting always rightly - that is, acting always by the standards
relevant before the act - will not necessarily result in the greatest possible
good, however that good is measured. But this, as most moral philos-
ophers by now agree, is hardly the place to demand an analytic guarantee.
What we can say is: that the overall tendency of a moral code to produce
good on the whole does have a direct bearing on our allegiance to that
complete code, while in the meantime probabilities (in Bishop Butler's

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famous phrase) must be "the guide of life". With intellectual evaluation,

the situation is similar: what we can say is, that continued discrimination
between conceptual variants, as they arise, can reasonably be expected to
result in the achievement of such intellectual goals as are, in the nature of
things, reasonably attainable; whereas any attempt to impose a priori
standards from the outside could well lead us to forego the attainable
'better' in favor of some idealized but unattainable 'best'.
Let me end with a final aside. The late George Paul once made a remark
about the relationship of metaphysics to morals: much of metaphysics
(he said) consists of a rearguard action, postponing the moment when
one is compelled to commit the naturalistic fallacy. Distinguishing be-
tween the desirable and the desired, exploring the formal aspects of choice
and evaluation without commitment to any moral position: these are
activities one can engage in only up to a point. Beyond that point, con-
ceptual analysis of moral discourse merges into the historico-sociological
analysis of our moral traditions. The same sort of thing holds (I believe)
in the philosophy of science and other intellectual disciplines. In the end,
we come up against a wall, and must pursue the philosophical analysis of
intellectual judgments in the context of a wider, historico-sociological
analysis of intellectual traditions generally.
To some, this conclusion will look like an open espousal of the 'genetic
fallacy'. Yet that would be to miss my point: By studying a particular
conceptual choice in science against its historical and cultural back-
ground, one does not automatically validate either the choice itself or the
criteria by which it was determined. But one does put oneself in a position
to see, in all their richness, the considerations which went to make up the
decision, and its consequences, both foreseeable and unforeseeable.
Without this, neither the relevance or irrelevance nor the force of those
considerations can be appraised. At the deepest level, conceptual judg-
ments are thus a matter of ease-law, not of code-law, of precedents, not of
principles. In the last resort, therefore, genetic studies are no longer
fallacious but necessary: and (to echo George Paul) much of what passes
as 'inductive logic', 'confirmation theory', and the like represent a rear-
guard action postponing the moment when that necessity is admitted.

Department of Philosophy,
Brandeis University

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REFERENCES

* The substance of this paper will form an early chapter of a book on conceptual
traditions and their evolution, in preparation.
1 These correspond closely, indeed, to the 'ideals of natural order' of 'paradigms'
- the term was borrowed from Wittgenstein - discussed in my •960 Mahlon Powell
Lectures at Indiana University, published in 1961 as Foresight and Understanding.
2 R. G. Collingwood, An Essay on Metaphysics, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1940, p. 73.
(Italics not by Collingwood.)
3 0 p . cir., p. 48.
4 Loc. cit.
5 See Lewis Carroll's famous article with this title in MindN.S. 4 (1895) 278-80.
e R. G. Collingwood, op, cit., 93-98.
7 T. S. Kuhn, 'The Function of Dogma in Scientific Research', in Scientific Change
(ed. A. C. Crombie), Heinemann, London 1963.
s T. S. Kulm, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, The University of Chicago Press,
Chicago, 1962.
9 T. S. Kulm, 'Logic of Discovery or Psychology or Research?', to be published in The
Philosophy of K. R. Popper (ed. P. A. Schilpp).
lo What authentic intellectual change in science has been quite profound as to be a
Kuhnian 'revolution'? During the last three-hundred years, the only illustration Kuhn
could confidently document in his book was the switch from the classical physics of
Galileo, Newton and Maxwell to the 20th-century physics of Einstein and the quantum
theory.
11 A difficulty could be raised at this point, which will be discussed in a later chapter of
the projected book. For the distinction between 'internal' and 'external' factors applies
clearly and cleanly only to 'compact' traditions, i.e. traditions which are the professional
concern of coherent groups of men, sharing common aims, activities, and standards of
judgment. In the case of more 'diffuse' traditions, it becomes less clear what exactly
'internal' factors are internal to. This connection between the structure of intellectual
traditions and the structure of the professions which are their bearers is important,
and needs close examination.
13 The novelties put forward for discussion within a 'compact' tradition are, of course,
closely related to the past development of the tradition - at any rate, in most cases.
(In this respect, intellectual evolution proceeds in a less 'random' and wasteful way
than organic evolution.) It is the more drastic and dramatic changes in concepts which
are more likely to find their sources outside the traditions in question: but these are, in
the nature of the case, the exception, not the rule. The smaller the 'mutations' the more
closely they are related to the previous course of the tradition.

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