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Les experiences du Comte de Rumford ayant pour but de prouver que la chaleur et la lumiere ne sont pas des substances materielles constituent des episodes celebres dans l'histoire des sciences physiques. D'apres l'A., le fait que J. Joule et d'autres se referent a Rumford plusieurs annees plus tard prouve que ses efforts n'ont pas ete inutiles pour le developpement de la science

Rumford’s experiments on the heat generated during the boring of cannons, from which he argued for the “inexhaustible” creation of heat by friction, were cited and used by James Prescott Joule many years later to calculate roughly a mechanical equivalent of heat.2 I shall suggest in what follows that the fact that this work was so cited and used by a later work that itself provided the reference point for even later research is a key factor in the growth of science.

In a book and a series of articles (1977a, 1977b, 1977c, 1978) Harold I. Brown has presented “the new theory of science”, which he characterizes as a “modest historicism”. I propose to examine Brown's contribution to the current debate on scientific method, and to show the inadequacy of his proposals. In particular, I want to concentrate on a fundamental concern of Brown's, namely, rationality.

The problem of the critical assessment of theories across paradigms raised by Kuhn is not resolved, it is argued, either by Scheffler's appeal to initial credibility or by Lakatos' conception of a research program. It is argued further that, in these contexts, the notion of reasonable choice by individuals makes no sense. The conclusion supports Feyerabend's position of “epistemological anarchism.”