Abstract
Philosophers have spilled much ink over the discovery of ideas in the classical “context of discovery”. However, there has been little engagement with the question of what constitutes a discovery of “things in the world”. A much-overlooked answer to this question is provided by T.S. Kuhn. In this paper, I show that discoveries awarded with a Nobel Prize in Physics in the past 53 years accord with a basic premise of Kuhn's account and his distinction between two types of natural kind discoveries. I also draw normative conclusions for credit attribution in science.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Journal | Philosophy of Science |
| ISSN | 0031-8248 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | E-pub / Early view - 2025 |
Keywords
- credit attribution
- discovery
- Kuhn
- Nobel prizes
- physics
- theory and experiment