Abstract

Ever since the publication in 1962 of Thomas Kuhn's highly influential book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, there has been considerable investigation of the nature of scientific revolutions. In this book Paul Thagard, analyzing historical examples of radical scientific transformations, presents an account of conceptual revolutions based on the Theory of Explanatory Coherence and on the assumption that thinking is computational, such that the "cognitive architecture" underlying theory construction and change can be replicated in the computer program ECHO.