scientific revolution
Field-transforming breakthrough
A scientific revolution is a fundamental shift in how scientists understand a field—when new discoveries or theories overturn established thinking and reshape entire disciplines.
Thomas Kuhn popularized the concept in his 1962 book, describing how normal science gives way to crisis and then paradigm shift.
The discovery of DNA sparked a scientific revolution in biology. (Capitalized Scientific Revolution refers to the specific historical period.)
- paradigm shiftWholesale replacement of frameworks
- upheavalViolent disturbance of order
- breakthroughSudden important advance
- experimentSystematic investigation procedure
- thought experimentHypothetical scenario for reasoning
hypothesis · discovery · natural philosophy · method · empirical evidence · inquiry · laws · laws of motion · reason · Age of Reason · observation · physics · astronomy · mathematics · Royal Society · inductive reasoning
- Early ModernRenaissance, 1500s, 1600s, Reformation, sixteenth century
- Philosophy & Scienceepistemology, empiricism, rationalism, metaphysics, hypothesis testing
- Philosophy of Scienceepistemology, falsifiability, hypothesis, theory, empiricism
- Science Historynatural philosophy, Royal Society, natural history, paradigm shift, Darwin
- 17th-18th century Europe movementsenlightenment, baroque, rococo, reformation, absolutism
- breakthroughsDNA discovery, germ theory, atomic theory, theory of relativity, quantum theory
scientific revolutionreligious dogma
Fixed spiritual beliefs
superstition · magical thinking · received wisdom · mysticism · obscurantism
scientific revolutionevolutionary change
Inherited trait shifts over generations
science, scientist, revolution, evolution, scientific, revolutionary, unscientific, revolutions, scientists