This has never made sense to me. Every teacher has explained to me that a political revolution has one party removed (violently sometimes) by a new party that usually has totally opposite political views and or values.
Technically speaking, wouldn’t this be a half revolution? Technically a revolution is “full circle” ie you end-up where you start.
Does this make any sense?
MtM
First thing to do is check out the lyrics of the Who’s Won’t Get Fooled Again.
Second thing is to remember that language (particularly the development of meaning is not quite a logical process).
Finally, the development of the meaning appears to have been along the lines of
1 to circle or to go about
2 to turn over (a 180 degree upset or capsizing)
3 to overturn (a complete change, used metaphorically from the second meaning)
Maybe it could help if you consider the way a crankshaft works. Even though the various strokes in the process cause the same cylinder to undergo four separate activities (intake, compression, ignition, exhaust), since there are (usually) multiple cylinders involved, the crankshaft revolves four times for each firing of the spark plug.
If you move this analogy into a political situation, it takes some time for the current regime to raise the ardor of the populace (intake) and get them angry (compression) until they engage in conflict (ignition) and force the regime out (exhaust) and then prepare for the next “cycle” by getting the populace steamed up again (intake and compression).
Since the ideals and reasons are trivial compared to the bloodshed, it’s the in’s vs. out’s each time.
At least that works for me.
>> the crankshaft revolves four times for each firing of the spark plug.
Make that “two times”. And I find your explanation as stilted and unnatural as it can possibly be.
Two times it is. What’s any more stilted about this analogy than any others in the thread? How would you resolve the OP’s concern?
Does anyone have change for a paradigm? 
There’s a lengthy discussion of pretty much this exact question in Revolution in Science (Belknap, 1985) by I. Bernard Cohen. In fact, the book is really three related books threaded together. Some chapters are surveys of the individual candidates for possible scientific revolutions (the Copernican revolution, the Darwinian revolution, etc.). Together these chapters make up a nice potted history of science by an expert on the subject. Other chapters form a history of the way people have talked about revolutions in science over the centuries - with one of his aims being to trace the origins of the notion, which far predate Thomas Kuhn.
Then there’s also a history of the broader usage of the term “revolution”. This is interesting to an historian of science like Cohen because, not only does it shed light on how the term has been applied to science, but it’s also had a technical scientific meaning as well. The origins of the notion are in Greek conceptions of history being cyclic. The likes of Plato and Polybius saw history as an endless repeating pattern of kings being overthrown by tyrants, who’re replaced by aristocratic rule, which becomes an oligarchy and then a democracy, only to lapse into mob-rule followed by the rise of a king and … Such a revolution is a never ending cycle that keeps returning to a version of where it was before.
By the middle ages, this had become a technical term in astronomy, the most famous use of which was by Copernicus in the title of De Revolutionibus. Here it’s a circular motion through 360 degrees. Like the Moon going around the Earth. And you get people using this technical usage as a metaphor for political events.
In the early modern period, one of the crucial uses is in connection with the Glorious Revolution of 1688 in England. Very roughly, the country was Protestant, but James II was Catholic and suspected of trying to change the national religion, so he was forced out. There’s still a cyclic sense to the term in this period. Protestants felt that the King was corrupting the prevailing Anglican settlement and so saw the event as the return to the correct state of affairs. But kicking the King out is not unlike the modern notion of a revolution and plenty of historians have treated 1688 as such an event.
The 18th century sees the crucial shift. Over it, the meaning shifts from being a return to being an overthrow. 360 to 180 degrees. The process, as usual in these cases, is murky and no doubt other scholars would argue with Cohen’s reconstruction of it. But events like the American and French Revolutions were clearly analogous to 1688. This works both ways. There are aspects of both events that are attempts to go back to an idealised past and so at times some people probably thought of these as revolutions in the traditional sense. A return to a previous state of affairs. But if you think of them as overthrowing the monarch, then they’re also revolutionary in the newer sense. “The World Turned Upside Down”. And these events also become associated with radicalism, so that revolution acquires the sense of being something new, something unseen before. Rather than being attached to a cyclical notion of history, revolutions become seen as part of a linear, progressive one. Or as essentially destructive. And it’s these that become the modern senses of the word.
However, this hardly exhausts the nuances. For example, in using the notion within the history of science, Kuhn’s revolution are neither cyclical, linear, progressive nor even particularly destructive.
The book’s worth reading as an exploration of these issues, even in part - the separate strands are organised such that you can easily follow one while ignoring the others.
How about if I toss in my 2 cents ten times?
“Revolution” in the correct context can mean a complete circle. But think of the verb “revolt” instead of “revolve.” Same Latin root according to dictionary.com – to turn around or turn over. Sounds like a revolution to me.
Would you accept ten clones of 2sense? :eek: