Very few scientists appear to have described their own work in terms of revolution. Some fifteen years of research on this subject, aided by contributions of many students and friends and the fruits of the investigation of several research assistants, have uncovered only some dozen or so instances of a scientist who said explicitly that his contribution was revolutionary or revolution-making or part of a revolution. These are, in chronological order: Robert Symmer, J.-P Marat, A.-L. Lavoisier, Justus von Lieberg, William Rowan Hamilton, Charles Darwin, Rudolf Virchow, Georg Cantor, Albert Einstein, Hermann Minkowski, Max von Laue, Alfred Wegener, Arthur H. Compton, Ernest Everett Just, James D. Watson, and Benoit Mandelbrot.
Of course, there have been others who have said dramatically that they have produced a new science (Tartaglia, Galileo) or a new astronomy (Kepler) or a “new way of philosophizing” (Gilbert). We would not expect to find many explicit references to a revolution in science prior to the late 1600s. Of the three eighteenth-century scientists who claimed to be producing a revolution, only Lavoisier succeeded in eliciting the same judgment of his work from his contemporaries and from later historians and scientists.
This amazingly high percentage of self-proclaimed revolutionary scientists (30% or more) seems like a result of selection bias, since most scientist with oversized egos are not even remembered. I wonder what fraction of actual scientists (not your garden-variety crackpots) insist on having produced a revolution in science.
I guess I might as well post quotes from (non-audio) books here as well, when I have no better place to put them.
First up is Revolution in Science.
Starting on page 45:
This amazingly high percentage of self-proclaimed revolutionary scientists (30% or more) seems like a result of selection bias, since most scientist with oversized egos are not even remembered. I wonder what fraction of actual scientists (not your garden-variety crackpots) insist on having produced a revolution in science.