Concept-Driven Revolutions and Tool-Driven Revolutions

Abstract

Freeman J. Dyson has introduced the notion of tool-driven revolution that stands in contrast to the concept-driven revolutions analysed by Thomas Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. We study Dyson's thesis, pay special attention in the interesting Dyson's idea of scientific tool and compare Dyson's point of view with Peter Galison's conception, as developed in Image and Logic. It seems that the differences between them are slightly stronger than Dyson suggests. Dyson's ideas yield some where between Galison and Ian Hacking, whose notion of disunity of science seems to be related to the abundance of tools and tool-driven revolutions Dyson has pointed.