I would describe the "revolution" in the following sense. Workers were aware of both successes and failures of the classical model, and did want to throw the baby out with the bath water. They adopted as a ground rule, that any candidate for a new theory had to contain the old theory as a corner case.

Rather than describing a dichotomy between conservatism and revolution, I'd say that the revolutionaries searched for and found a hybrid of the two.

I also think that if any departure from steady-state is defined as a "revolution," then it's self fulfilling.