How Scientific Progress Occurs: Incrementalism and the Life Sciences

Some scientists describe new theories, experiments, discoveries, or the use of new technology as paradigm shifts. Others call them scientific revolutions. What scientists believe to be true is not arrived at by consensus but by the weight of experiments and their results. Most of the time new tools lead to new theories, a process the historian Elof Carlson calls "incrementalism", an evolving human enterprise that depends on new technologies for generating new data and scientific progress. In this provocative work, Carlson explores how new fields of the life sciences emerge.