Changes

The Structure of Scientific Revolution was published in 1962. In his treatment, Thomas Kuhn didn’t use the normative methodology of his predecessors and instead built a framework which reflected the science as it was actually practiced. He also stressed the role of the scientific community in the creation of scientific knowledge. According to Kuhn, the scientific community accepted paradigms which are the frameworks for interpreting the world. After accepting a paradigmatic, exemplary case, scientists can come to a consensus which consist in foundational assumptions, common taxonomy, common scientific language and common ontology. Paradigms determine the methods of theory evaluation, the sort of questions that could be asked and many other aspects of the scientific enterprise. He also claimed that paradigms were incommensurable owing to the fact that they employed different language and different evaluating standards. This raised the question why would a scientific community prefer one paradigm over the other? Instead of coming up with a rationality, Kuhn’s answer implied that paradigm change was a result of sociological factor which were not rule based. Kuhn was instrumental in bringing the '''historicist turn''' in philosophy of science which emphasized the importance of the actual practice of science in the philosophical treatments of science. The social aspects of scientific knowledge now gained prominence, a fact which influenced Helen Longino.

1980’s experienced a rapid surge in research on social aspects of scientific inquiry. One reason was the emergence of radical social movements such as feminism whose members questioned previously held views on the relationship between gender and scientific inquiry, the role of the community. Feminist epistemology questioned the atomistic notion of individual knower as opposed to accounts where knowledge is social. Proponents of feminist standpoint epistemology argue that the experiences women face give them a privileged epistemological standpoint. Other feminist epistemologists argued that the content of science determines whether it is feminist or not. Longino herself was greatly influenced by feminist epistemology and describes her own position as doing epistemology as a feminist which involves bringing the traditional feminist concerns into epistemology. [[CiteRef::Longino (1987)]] Another reason was the emergence of big science which is the scientific research that requires large team of scientists. In many fields, the scientific research consists of practices which no individuals can know on their own. Consequently, the social aspects of science became paramount to the justification of the actual practice of science. Due to emergence of big science, social aspects of are indispensable to policing and falsifying scientific hypothesis and views. Scientific community uses processes such as peer review and replication to challenge the ideas of individual scientists and eliminate the bias of the individuals from the production of scientific knowledge.