In addition to theories persisting -- by being modified but not eliminated -- some ideas persist even with revolutionary theory change. A good example is atoms.
Realists have a simple explanation for this. The advocates were on the right track. They did not have the whole truth, but they had some of it. The idea that the physical world is comprised of atoms has persisted for centuries, even though ideas about the nature of those atoms has varied much with time. Even some prominent scientists in the 19th century thought atoms were only a useful fiction because they could not be directly measured. But more discoveries about atoms overcome the dissent. There must really be atoms, and we must really know something about them. Realists don't expect science always takes the direct road to truth and never deviates. But some ideas survive in spite of what develops. Indeed, these persistent ideas emerge stronger than before. Successful revolutions, though changing concepts in many ways, still have to accommodate those persistent ideas. (It Started With Copernicus, 186).
On the other hand, some ideas are abandoned and support Kuhn's ideas of a theory meeting a crisis and being abandoned. A famous example is phlogiston. This was a substance thought to be released during combustion. There was considerable evidence to support the hypothesis, so it was a widely accepted chemical theory in the late 17th and much of the 18th century. So false theories can have true consequences, and go against the idea that science always converges toward truth. The phlogiston theory was superseded by the oxygen theory of combustion.
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