File:Three models of theory change.png

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A hopefully useful graphical representation (along the lines of Venn diagrams) of three models of theory change derived from the history of science. The first shows a model of the sort associated with the work of Karl Popper, whereby each theory subsumes the information of previous theories completely. The second is one following from the work of Thomas Kuhn, where paradigms shift from one to another, rejecting some parts of the previous and subsuming some older parts to their new way of thinking. The third is an attempt (perhaps poor) to outline the chaos described by Paul Feyerabend, based in part on a graphic he included in his book Against Method, showing theories only partially related to previous theories if at all (the overlapping areas of the earlier theories are only the parts which could be "warped" and "distorted" to fit into the new theory) and are unbounded and incoherently defined. Somewhere in between these three models one can fit most other models of scientific theory change; they do a good job rhetorically at illustrating the various extremes. They of course obscure various nuances and differences between the different models, but do well as a "rough" guide, I think.

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