Aether / or : the Creation of Scientific Concepts

WHEN WE survey the history of science, no matter what our philosophical persuasions, it is clear that the formation of new ways of conceptualizing reality is a central feature of the scientific enterprise and of what we call ‘scientific progress’. However, little attention has been given to the study of how these new concepts are actually formed. Indeed, until the last 20 years or so, the question of how new concepts are formed in science has been relegated to the status of ‘mere’ psychology and not even done by psychologists! Concept formation has been seen by philosophers of such disparate views as Reichenbach, Popper and Feyerabend as incapable of rational analysis; as involving some ‘creative leap’; as a matter of individual psychology; as lying within the ‘context of discovery’. The proper concern of philosophers is that of legitimating the new conceptual structures once they are formed; i.e., it lies within the ‘context of justification’. Historians, on the other hand, have worked quite steadily within the context forbidden to philosophers, but have not attempted to formulate theories about how concept formation takes place. With a few exceptions, even those historically oriented philosophers, who have argued that certain aspects of discovery provide legitimate concerns for philosophers, have tended to focus on the transition from one ‘completed’ theory to another. The general situation just characterized has, as I will argue, led to serious misconceptions concerning the way concepts are created in science. In this paper,