How Scientific Progress Occurs: Incrementalism and the Life Sciences, Hardcover

In this provocative work, the historian Elof Carlson explores how new fields of the life sciences emerge. Some scientists describe new theories, experiments, discoveries, or the use of new technology as paradigm shifts. Others call them scientific revolutions. The idea of paradigm shifts was introduced in 1962 by Thomas Kuhn, using as an example the emergence of the Copernican view that the sun, not the earth, was the center of the known universe. Carlson, however, argues by contrast the history of the life sciences is not an unbroken sequence of paradigm shifts but instead rather messy, with lots of contending ideas. What scientists believe to be true is not arrived at by consensus but by the weight of experiments and their results. Most of the time new tools lead to new theories, a process Carlson calls "incrementalism", an evolving human enterprise that depends on new technologies for generating new data and scientific progress.

Elof Axel Carlson (born 1931) was raised in Brooklyn, New York, and attended New York University for his B.A. degree. He went to Indiana University to study genetics with Nobelist H. J. Muller, completing his Ph.D. in 1958. He then took a position as Lecturer at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario and in 1960 accepted a position at UCLA where he sponsored six students for their Ph.D. degrees. In 1968, Carlson moved to Stony Brook University and in 1974 he was awarded the statewide title of Distinguished Teaching Professor. He retired from Stony Brook University in 2000 and moved to Bloomington, Indiana, where he is a Visiting Scholar in Indiana University's Institute for Advanced Study.

Carlson is a geneticist, historian of science, and writer. He has authored or edited 13 books, including The Gene: A Critical History; Genes, Radiation, and Society: the Life and Work of H. J. Muller; The Unfit: A History of a Bad Idea; Mendel's Legacy: A History of Classical Genetics; and The 7 Sexes: Biology of Sex Determination. He also has written a science column, Life Lines, which has appeared since 1997 in the North Shore Long Island newspapers of publisher Leah Dunaieff.

Carlson is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and recipient, in 1972, of the Harbison Award for Gifted Teaching from the Danforth foundation. He is married to Nedra (née Miller) Carlson and they have five children, 12 grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren.