Publication Details

Abstract

The paper aims at a more precise articulation of the concept of the epistemic framework, giving us a means for a more accurate analysis of scientific revolutions and related problems of continuity and discontinuity in the evolution of science. In the second paragph the concepts of the ideal, conceptual, and evidential frameworks of a theory are introduced, highlighted by the case of Newtonian mechanics. In the third paragraph the gradual and conservative develoment of the ideal framework is shown - contrary to the conceptual and evidential ones. From this follows, that the change of this ideal framework is not an unpredicable, culture-depended leap, as it is with the conceptual and the evidential ones. Just the opposite, the ideal framework changes regularly. This in its turn enables us to determine several basic types od scientific revolutions.