In sociology of scientific knowledge, Planck's principle is the view that scientific change does not occur because individual scientists change their mind, but rather that successive generations of scientists have different views.

Formulation

This was formulated by

Max Planck Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck (, ; 23 April 1858 – 4 October 1947) was a German theoretical physicist whose discovery of energy quanta won him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918. Planck made many substantial contributions to theoretical ...

: Colloquially, this is often paraphrased as "Science progresses one funeral at a time".

Adoption

Planck's quote has been used by

Thomas Kuhn Thomas Samuel Kuhn (; July 18, 1922 – June 17, 1996) was an American philosopher of science whose 1962 book ''The Structure of Scientific Revolutions'' was influential in both academic and popular circles, introducing the term '' paradig ...

Paul Feyerabend Paul Karl Feyerabend (; January 13, 1924 – February 11, 1994) was an Austrian-born philosopher of science best known for his work as a professor of philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, where he worked for three decades (195 ...

Moran Cerf Moran Cerf is am American-French-Israeli neuroscientist, professor of business (at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University), investor and former white hat hacker. He is the founder of Think-Alike and B-Cube and the host and ...

and others to argue that

scientific revolutions The Scientific Revolution was a series of events that marked the emergence of modern science during the early modern period, when developments in mathematics, physics, astronomy, biology (including human anatomy) and chemistry transform ...

are non-rational, rather than spreading through "mere force of truth and fact".

Rebuttal

Whether age influences the readiness to accept new ideas has been empirically criticised. In the case of acceptance of

evolution Evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. These characteristics are the expressions of genes, which are passed on from parent to offspring during reproduction. Variation ...

in the years after Darwin's ''

On the Origin of Species ''On the Origin of Species'' (or, more completely, ''On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life''),The book's full original title was ''On the Origin of Species by Me ...

'', age was a minor factor. On a more specialized scale, it also was a weak factor in accepting

cliometrics Cliometrics (, also ), sometimes called new economic history or econometric history, is the systematic application of economic theory, econometric techniques, and other formal or mathematical methods to the study of history (especially social and ...

. A study of when different geologists accepted plate tectonics found that older scientists actually adopted it ''sooner'' than younger scientists. However, a more recent study on life science researchers found that following the deaths of preeminent researchers, publications by their collaborators rapidly declined while the activity of non-collaborators and the number of new researchers entering their field rose.

References

{{reflist Principle Concepts in epistemology Epistemology of science Historiography of science Philosophy of science Principles Scientific revolution Sociology of scientific knowledge Cognitive inertia