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People might think that one is tempted to speak on the scientific discoveries are from the source to the power of science, is a driver of social change, which scientists have discovered, constantly, relentlessly found, the new truth, and the nature and expressed concern that changes are as follows. However, I would like to argue the case, and stressed that this… This is a scientific concept, is responsible for this change, and this is not found as a matter of fact, is the incarnation of the idea of new discovery.           Ideas and Discoveries     Science, especially since 1800, has become a relentless driver of almost continual social change, physically affecting the world, but from our perspective more significantly affecting how we live, where we live, what we do, what we eat, what we wear, the lifespan of humanity. In every way that we feel directly, that we experience directly, science, especially since 1800, is identified with the relentless and even accelerating pace of social change that has been characteristic initially of western societies, and has now become a global phenomenon…   One might think, one is tempted to speak, of scientific discoveries as being the source of science’s power to be a driver of social change; that scientists have been discovering, continually and relentlessly discovering, new truths about nature, and that the change follows from that. But I want to argue and to emphasize… that it is scientific ideas that are responsible for this change, not discoveries; that as a matter of fact discoveries are ideas incarnate. That it is the ideas that are the source of science’s power, not discoveries.   Copernicus did not discover that the earth moved around the sun. It was an idea of Copernicus’s that the earth moved around the sun rather than that the sun moved around the earth. Einstein did not discover the special or general theories of relativity; Einstein had an idea that led to the special theory of relativity. A different but related idea… led to the general theory of relativity. It was when these ideas panned out, so to speak, when these ideas were accepted because of their explanatory power, or confirmed by subsequent experimentation, that scientists said that they had discovered new truths about nature; that they had discovered new facts about the universe. Darwin did not discover the theory of evolution, nor did Alfred Russell Wallace; both of them had a certain idea, and then showed that facts that were known to everyone could be put in a more powerfully ordered and explanatory form if you accepted the idea of evolution by natural selection. Of course we can continue along these lines, but I think you get the idea. Even when you think that you have a case of a discovery, even when a scientist looks at the results of an experiment, or looks through an instrument and discovers, for example, the cell theory of life…what we’re really seeing is that an idea has shaped the experiment to begin with; the idea that led to the generalization, based on a few observations, that cells were the fundamental form of all living things.   …So what we have in the case of science is that since the early 19th century science has become a driver of change through the power of its ideas.           — Steven L. Goldman, Great Scientific Ideas That Changed the World, Part I                 Indexes/09