THE PUMPKIN HOUR IN SCIENCE

(How and Why Major Achievements Turn into Marginal Findings)

Armen E. Petrosyan

By scrutinizing Theodore Richards’ thirty years career success almost entirely due to the determination of the atomic weights, the author casts light on a very important phenomenon in science that slips the minds of philosophers and scientists up to now. The Pumpkin Hour comes when an all-embracing transformation of the conceptual background of a subject field that brings to a revision of its basic tenets turns the fine carriage of some – not only theoretical but even experimental – results raised to the rank of outstanding contribution into a pumpkin of minor improvements with no crucial role in knowledge. The paper shows the mechanism governing the reappraisal of “pieces” of knowledge and reveals the link preventing the scientific community from proper assessment of new ideas and facts: a discovery is valued the higher the more the value it adds (by consolidating, unfolding, and supporting) to the conceptual background through the lens of which it itself is looked at.

Contents

Approval of the New As Self-affirmantion of the Old

Keywords: contribution, appraisal, relevancy, recognition, atomic weight.

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