Revoluţia Ştiinţifică: ascensiunea şi declinul unui concept
Scientific Revolution: Rise and Fall of a Concept

Summary/Abstract: The belief that something very important has happened to our conception of the world somewhere in the seventeenth century has been for a long time a commonplace in the history of philosophy. For a while, this event was called „the birth of the modern science”. During the first quarter of our century the newly born history of science introduced the term „Scientific Revolution” to designate a deep epistemological change centered on the new method. For almost fifty years, now, the „Scientific Revolution” is a basic concept in the historiographical explanation. My paper follows the transformations in its meaning. Starting as a modified version of the foundational myth of the „birth of the modern science”, the „Scientific Revolution” underwent a deep process of change. A large group of explanatory stories have been constructed around the idea that the Scientific Revolution was a necessary event in the evolution of thought and ideas of Western World. The only mystery about it was why it happened in the seventeenth century and not earlier or later, and why in the West and not in the East. I will call this type of stories „the astrological model of the Scientific Revolution”. In the large group of stories constructed upon the astrological model the very basis of explanation is the search after causes and influences which concur to produce the Scientific Revolution. I will analyse the problems and the results of the „astrological model” and its transformations during the past thirty years, pointing to possible alternatives in which the concept of „Scientific Revolution” looses its political and social connotations.

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