“The invention of other
new theories regularly, and appropriately, evokes the same response
from some of the specialists on whose areas of special competence they
impinge. For these men the new theory implies a change in the rules
governing the prior practice of normal science. Inevitably,
therefore, it reflects on much scientific work they have already
completed. That is why a new theory, however special its range of
application, is seldom or never just an increment to what is already
known. Its assimilation requires the reconstruction of prior theory
and the re-evaluation of prior fact, an intrinsically revolutionary
process that is seldom completed by a single man and never overnight.
No wonder historians have difficulty in dating precisely this
extended process that their vocabulary impels them to view as an
isolated event.”
THE STRUCTURE OF
SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTIONS, by Thomas S. Kuhn, p.7, introduction by Ian
Hacking (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, London: 2012)
Both Jesus Christ and
Martin Luther King, Jr. are revolutionaries within the putative
scientific class described above.
