A communication model of conceptual innovation in science

This essay exploring the nature of scientific communication begins with the premise that conceptual innovation is both a fundamental scientific activi ty and essentially a communication phenomenon. Conceptual innovation is fun damental as a scientific practice in that science as an institution is pred icated on the development of new knowledge. It is essentially communicative in that it is the public character of science that relies on the consensua l and communal evaluation of knowledge claims that determines the fate of n eu, ideas. Science comprises a number of overlapping discursive formations whose nature is determined by the positions of (and relationships among) ac tors and ideas within communication and ideational networks, and which art, characterized by a particular situational logic. The nature of these situa tional logics is such as to give rise to some of the characteristic communi cation dynamics of science, including consensus, problemshift, branching, a nd demarcation.