title: Conceptual change, crucial experiments and auxiliary hypotheses. A theoretical contribution.
abstract: Theories about conceptual change have been generally related to historical and philosophical analysis of science. Yet, there is still much debate on how ideas coming from the history of science and their implications can be applied in this field. Our study intends to investigate the complex structure of conceptual change, by making use of some particularly representative features of the History and Philosophy of science, while considering the structure of so-called crucial experiments and the specific role of implicit hypotheses. Due to their historical importance and logical reasoning aspects, examining these issues may contribute to understand how conceptual change may take place.
authors.affiliation: University of Buenos Aires and National Council for Science and Technological Research (CONICET), Buenos Aires, Argentina. leo@levinas.com.ar
authors.forename: Marcelo Leonardo
authors.initials: ML
authors.lastname: Levinas
authors.forename: Mario
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Carretero
mesh_terms: D001256:Astronomy / Q000266:history; D049668:History, 15th Century; D049669:History, 16th Century; D049670:History, 17th Century; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D012106:Research / Q000266:history; D012586:Science / Q000266:history