Jens:
In his book, "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions," Thomas S. Kuhn takes on the nature of scientific progress. Rather than a linear progression, Kuhn sees a progression of paradigms, anomolies within those paradigms, and then crises created by the anomolies. The result of this progression is the formation of a new paradigm.
Ironically, sees the linear illusion as a result of scientists and scientific historians to view prior work in the context of the current paradigm. Thus, textbooks and research papers tend to selectively imbue the work of a former scientific "superstar" with attitudes and insights that really didn't exist for that scientist. This is not to take away from the accomplishments of the previous scientists--it's just the nature of things. As a fish could be said to be unaware of the waters around it, the scientist always works within a prevailing paradigm--even if, as with Einstein, the new paradigm has yet to be accepted.
Kuhn states: "Scientists are not, of course, the only group that tends to see its discipline's past developing linearly toward its present vantage. The temptation to write history backward is both omnipresent and perennial. But scientists are more affected by the temptation to rewrite history, partly because the results of scientific research show no obvious dependence upon the historical context of the inquiry, and partly because, except during crisis and revolution, the scientist's contemporary position seems so secure. . .The result is a persistent tendency to make the history of science look linear or cumulative, a tendency that even affects scientists looking back at their own research." (pp 138-139, 3rd edition)
The scientist--within the secure paradigm of his/her own context--formulates and tests hypotheses, designs experiments, develops insights, and--certainly--builds on the work of the past. But to take the scientist out of that context and see the work as some obvious result of generations of scientific research is quite often wrong. The anomolies in the prevailing paradigm plant the seeds for the revolution that instantiates a new paradigm. And--this is the edgy part of Kuhn's work--the truth of a particular scientist's theory or discovery can only be viewed properly in the context of that scientist's paradigm. In other words, scientific truth is dependent on the prevailing paradigm and not the other way around!
Kuhn continues: "Since new paradigms are born from old ones, they ordinarily incorporate much of the vocabulary and apparatus, both conceptual and manipulative, that the traditional paradigm employed. But they seldom employ these borrowed elements in quite the traditional way. Within the new paradigm, old terms, concepts, and experiments fall into new relationships one with the other. . .To make the transition to Einstein's universe, the whole conceptual web whose strands are space, time, matter, force, and so on, had to be shifted and laid down again on nature whole. . .Communication across the revolutionary divide is inevitably partial." (p 149)
With regard to the heliocentric revolution in science, Kuhn states: "Consider. . .the men who called Copernicus mad because he proclaimed that the earth moved. They were not either just wrong or quite wrong. Part of what they meant by 'earth' was fixed position. Their earth, at least, could not be moved. Correspondingly, Copernicus' innovation was not simply to move the earth. Rather, it was a whole new way of regarding the problems of physics and astronomy, one that necessarily changed the meaning of both 'earth' and 'motion.'" (pp. 149-150)
Of course, I've only photoread (and superread) the book, so I may be missing his point. 
--George
[This message has been edited by GeorgeA (edited March 22, 2001).]
