Progress in science often arises through a fruitful interplay between experiment and theory. New experimental observations - made possible, perhaps, by some advance in instrumentation - may fail to agree in all respects with theories constructed to account for related phenomena; those theories then have to be modified. leading to fresh insights and, perhaps, to new predictions which can then in turn be tested. But what happens when the discrepancy between observation and expectation is so gross that the existing theoretical framework simply cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, be modified or extended to accommodate the new information? In their book, Gavroglu and Goudaroulis attempt to answer the question through an historical study of low-temperature physics.
Review of "Methodological Aspects of the Development of Low Temperature Physics 1881-1956: Concepts out of Context(s)", by Kostas Gavroglu and Yorgos Goudaroulis, Kluwer Academic, 1989, Pp. 178.