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Antoine Lavoisier
Dalton was an English scientist who lived during the 18th and 19th centuries. Though he initially started out as a meteorologist, Dalton ultimately became famous for his law of partial pressures, which viewed air pressure through a mechanical lens and thus cast doubt on much of Lavoisier’s work. Kuhn argues that Dalton was able to gain a unique perspective on air pressure specifically because he was trained in meteorology rather than chemistry.
John Dalton Quotes in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
The The Structure of Scientific Revolutions quotes below are all either spoken by John Dalton or refer to John Dalton. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 10
Quotes
Chemists could not, therefore, simply accept Dalton’s theory on the evidence, for much of that was still negative. Instead, even after accepting the theory, they had still to beat nature into line, a process which, in the event, took almost another generation. When it was done, even the percentage composition of well-known compounds was different. The data themselves had changed. That is the last of the senses in which we may want to say that after a revolution scientists work in a different world.
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Chapter 12
Quotes
These examples point to the third and most fundamental aspect of the incommensurability of competing paradigms. In a sense that I am unable to explicate further, the proponents of competing paradigms practice their trades in different worlds. One contains constrained bodies that fall slowly, the other pendulums that repeat their motions again and again. In one, solutions are compounds, in the other mixtures. One is embedded in a flat, the other in a curved, matrix of space.
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John Dalton Quotes in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
The The Structure of Scientific Revolutions quotes below are all either spoken by John Dalton or refer to John Dalton. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 10
Quotes
Chemists could not, therefore, simply accept Dalton’s theory on the evidence, for much of that was still negative. Instead, even after accepting the theory, they had still to beat nature into line, a process which, in the event, took almost another generation. When it was done, even the percentage composition of well-known compounds was different. The data themselves had changed. That is the last of the senses in which we may want to say that after a revolution scientists work in a different world.
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Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 12
Quotes
These examples point to the third and most fundamental aspect of the incommensurability of competing paradigms. In a sense that I am unable to explicate further, the proponents of competing paradigms practice their trades in different worlds. One contains constrained bodies that fall slowly, the other pendulums that repeat their motions again and again. In one, solutions are compounds, in the other mixtures. One is embedded in a flat, the other in a curved, matrix of space.
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Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
