Hossein Jorjani
First publication: 2026 – 07 – 19
The history of science is often presented through the achievements of a relatively small number of celebrated individuals. Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Darwin, Einstein, and a few others have become canonical figures whose discoveries symbolize entire scientific disciplines. Their prominence is fully deserved. Yet an exclusive focus on such exceptional individuals may produce a distorted understanding of science itself.
This tendency may be called the Canonization Problem. By concentrating primarily on a handful of intellectual giants, discussions of science risk identifying the character of scientific inquiry with the achievements of its most extraordinary practitioners. The resulting image emphasizes revolutionary discoveries while overlooking the countless observations, measurements, experiments, replications, refinements, and theoretical adjustments through which scientific knowledge normally advances.
Modern science is not the work of isolated geniuses but of extensive intellectual communities. Scientific progress depends upon the cumulative efforts of researchers who develop instruments, improve methods, collect data, verify results, correct errors, and extend the work of their predecessors. Revolutionary discoveries are possible only because they emerge from this broader methodological and institutional framework.
The Canonization Problem also affects philosophical reflection. Conclusions about science are sometimes drawn from a few celebrated episodes, such as the Copernican Revolution, Newtonian mechanics, Darwinian evolution, or relativity. Although these episodes are historically significant, they do not necessarily represent the ordinary functioning of scientific inquiry. Exceptional moments should not be mistaken for the everyday processes by which knowledge is produced.
Recognizing the importance of scientific communities does not diminish the achievements of exceptional individuals. Rather, it places those achievements within the collaborative enterprise that made them possible. Great scientists transform disciplines, but disciplines are sustained by communities.
A balanced philosophy of science should therefore attend not only to canonical figures but also to the collective practices through which scientific knowledge is generated, tested, and progressively refined.
Hossein Jorjani 