Abstract
We concluded the last chapter with a caution: the fact that networks have been previously aligned in workable solutions is no guarantee at all that this happy state of affairs will necessarily continue into the indefinite future. A new instance which challenges the existing wisdom and fragments the community of scientists may, in principle, arise at any time. In this chapter, in pulling together some of the themes that have been touched upon earlier, we consider the various possibilities open to any group in the face of anomaly. Again we approach this topic by means of examples drawn from the natural sciences, but most of what we have to say is perfectly general.
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Endnotes
For further details of this case see Rob Williams and John Law, ‘Beyond the Bounds of Credibility’, Fundamenta Scientiae, 1 (1980), pp. 295–315,
John Law and Rob Williams, ‘Putting Facts Together: a Study of Scientific Persuasion’, Social Studies of Science, 12 (1982) pp. 535–58.
For a further entertaining case, see Ron Westrum, ‘Social Intelligence about Anomalies: the Case of UFOs’, Social Studies of Science, 1 (1977) pp. 271–302.
For some further details see Peter Doig, A Concise History of Astronomy (Chapman & Hall, London, 1950) pp. 115–16.
There is an immense literature on the chemical revolution. Readers might start by looking at J. B. Conant, The Overthrow of the Phlogiston Theory: the Chemical Revolution of 1775–1789 (Harvard Case Histories in Experimental Science, Case 2, Cambridge, Mass., 1950).
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© 1984 John Law and Peter Lodge
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Law, J., Lodge, P. (1984). Anomalies and Scientific Revolutions. In: Science for Social Scientists. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-17536-9_17
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-17536-9_17
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