The structure of scientific revolutions by Thomas s. Kuhn.

 

Let's see. What do I want to remember.

 

The books talks about the different between knowledge and tacit knowledge.  knowledge is when I learn something. Tacit Knowledge is when I learn how to map the knowledge to unfamiliar situations. So, call it the difference between book learning and wisdom or street smarts. Kuhn suggests that when we learning anything new, we always go through stages of "ignorance" (I don't know) to "learned knowledge" (I know the facts, but can't apply them to novel situations) to "tacit knowledge" (I can solve new problems by mapping them back to things I once learnt)

 

That history is written by the victors and it's impact on now we see the past. The victors (and their related authors) are not interested in discussing the doubt and uncertainty that lead up to there conclusions. They want to present their points so that readers can understand them. So when you look back over historical texts, and modern text books, you get an overly linear view of scientific progress.

 

The science is unique in its view of progress. In science, your ideas must encompass all past ideas, plus you must add your own. In art, any idea that encompasses all past ideas would be taken as derivative.

 

Scientific paradigm shifts are not clean an easy. Sometimes the new and better shifts take decades to take root. People hated Newton's ideas because it didn't explain why gravity existed. Also, the instruments at the time were very erratic. Newton's laws didn't explain the data that much better than the old.

 

New scientist adopt the new theories because they are more useful than the old. Old scientists die off.  Sometimes there will be a definitive test that proves the new theory correct, and the old wrong. This is the exception. Most new theories are just slightly better than the old theories they replaced.

 

the discovery of oxygen is a good example. The old, wrong, theory, had a simple, clean explanation for why fire needed air to burn.  The idea that air contained oxygen, nitrogen, CO2 and other gases each with there own properties, sounds like you are making things up to explain your observations. It took a long time for the theory of oxygen to take over.