🚀 go-pugleaf

jlanfield2003@yahoo.com (Jeff Lanfield) wrote in message news:<235c483f.0407201549.681ffa4@posting.google.com>...
> I am writing a paper on how new ideas gain acceptance in science. I
> would like to get opinions on what were the most profound books and
> thinkers on scientific epistemology you have encountered. 
> 
> By  this I mean a work that totally changed the way you look at the
> world and at science. Below is my list. I would be grateful for your
> additions. I
> am really looking for works that are novel and different, orthogonal
> to the ones I listed. For example, I included Bertalanffy's General
> System Theory so I do not want the many, many other books on General
> System Theory.
> 
> I'm specifically looking for the thinkers and books that are not only
> highly original but also under-appreciated and not as widely known as
> they deserve to be. For instance, Aristotle, Plato, and Darwin will
> not make this list as their work is well known and universally
> recognized.
> 
> 
> My list (no particular order): 
> 
> Rene Thom: Structural Stability and Morphogenesis
> Ludwig von Bertalanffy: General System Theory 
> David Bohm: Wholeness and Implicate order

Callen's "Thermodynamics" is certainly novel, different and under
appreciated. It certainly is orthogonal to traditional approaches. It
is not written in a manner for someone who is just learning thermo,
but rather for someone already familiar with the subject and who would
gain from a new viewpoint.

Much of modern science is not done by writing books, but rather by
publishing research articles. It takes many researchers, many articles
and many years for a new field to develop, such as with fractals,
chaos (non-linear dynamics), ... You can certainly point out seminal
papers, (usually with hindsight) but it is seldom that a researchers
writes a tome that initially sets off a new field.  They only example
that I can think of in that vein is Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science",
which I have not read.

John