1. The reconstruction of history by post-revolutionary science texts involves more than a multiplication of historical misconstructions.
A. Because they aim quickly to acquaint the student with what the contemporary scientific community thinks it knows, textbooks treat the various experiments, concepts, laws and theories of the current normal science as separately and as nearly seriatim as possible.
B. Those misconstructions render revolutions invisible; the arrangement of the still visible material in science texts implies a process that, if it existed, would deny revolutions a function.
C. But when combined with the generally unhistorical air of science writing and with the occasional systematic misconstruction, one impression is likely to follow.
D. As pedagogy this technique of presentation is unexceptionable.
6. Science has reached its present state by a series of individual discoveries and inventions that, when
gathered together, constitute the modem body of technical knowledge.