The Sun, the Genome, and the Internet

Ch 1, "Scientific Revolutions," p13.

Some scientific revolutions arise from the invention of new tools for
observing nature.  Others arise from the discovery of new concepts for
understanding nature.  Two historians, Peter Galison and Thomas Kuhn, have
explored in depth the process of scientific discovery in the modern age.
Galison's great work, Image and Logic, was published in 1997.  Kuhn's The
Structure of Scientific Revolutions appeared thirty-five years earlier.
....
Their views of the history of science are totally different.  Their two
books have almost nothing in common.  Galison's book contains hundreds of
pictures of scientific apparatus; Kuhn's book contains only words.  For
Galison the process of scientific discovery is driven by new tools, for
Kuhn by new concepts.  Both pictures are true and neither is complete.  
The progress of science requirs both new concepts and new tools.

The difference between Galison and Kuhn is largely a difference of
emphasis.  Kuhn emphasized ideas and Galison emphasizes things.

Unfortunately, Kuhn's version of history was dominant for thirty years
before Galison's version appeared to restore the balance....

Although I am a theorist, I happen to find Galison's view of science more
congenial.  Most theoretical physicists have an opposite bias, having more
respect for philosophy and less respect for gadgetry.  The science that I
describe in this book is Galisonian science, based on the clever use of
tools rather than on philosophical argument.  Science for me is the
practice of a skilled craft, closer to boiler-making [reference to earlier 
in the text] than to philosophy.

Most of the recent scientific revolutions have been tool-driven, like the
double-helix revolution in biology and the big-bang revolution in
astronomy....

It often happens when a new religion is founded that the followers become
far more rigid and doctrinaire than the founder....  A few years ago, I
happened to meet Kuhn at a scientific meeting and complained to him about
the nonsense that had been attached to his name.  He reacted angrily.  In a
voice loud enough to be heard by everybody in the hall, he shouted, "One
thing you have to understand.  I am not a Kuhnian."

---
Earlier (p.11):

One of the most important tools of modern science is the computer.  The
building of computers began as a craft industry....  The craft industry of
computer manufacture is now coming to an end.

But science gave birth to a larger craft industry that is still
flourishing, the software industry....  In spite of the rise of 
Microsoft and other giant producers, software remains in large part a 
craft industry....

[end]