CONCEPTUAL REVOLUTIONS: FROM COGNITIVE SCIENCE TO MEDICINE

Conceptual Revolutions deals with the issue of revolutions in science due to “internal” factors rather than to “external” components. The book assumes that history of science has shown us the existence of deep changes in scientific activity, and the aim is to characterize them properly. In this regard, the emphasis is here on the analysis of concepts used by scientists rather than on contextual aspects of scientific research (social, cultural, economic, political, etc.). De facto, this characterization of revolutions in terms of variations in concepts supposes an alternative view to Thomas Kuhn’s approach to scientific revolutions.
The configuration of the book underlines two scientific realms — cognitive science and medicine — because of their relevance nowadays for conceptual revolutions. These disciplines receive particular attention in the five sections of the book, which involves ten chapters. The volume starts with the most general topic: conceptual revolutions and complexity. Thereafter, it moves on to specific issues in cognitive science and medicine as well as in new sciences. The kind of problems discussed here are mainly contemporary ones. Thus, there are many aspects that have not been analyzed in Kuhn’s volume The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.