Thomas Samuel Kuhn
Thomas Samuel Kuhn was an American intellectual who wrote extensively on the
history of science and developed several important notions in the philosophy of science.
Encyclopedia
Thomas Samuel Kuhn was an American intellectual who wrote extensively on the
history of science and developed several important notions in the philosophy of science.
Life
He was born to a
Jewish family in
Cincinnati, Ohio to Samuel L. Kuhn, an industrial engineer, and Minette Stroock Kuhn. He obtained his bachelor's degree in
physics from
Harvard University in 1943, his master's in 1946 and Ph.D. in 1949, and taught a course in the history of science there from 1948 until 1956 at the suggestion of Harvard president
James Conant. After leaving Harvard, Kuhn taught at the
University of California, Berkeley, in both the philosophy department and the history department, being named Professor of the
History of Science in 1961. In 1964 he joined
Princeton University as the M. Taylor Pyne Professor of Philosophy and History of Science. In 1979 he joined the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology as the
Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Philosophy, remaining there until 1991.
Kuhn was named a Guggenheim Fellow in 1954, and in 1982 was awarded the George Sarton Medal in the
History of Science. He was also awarded numerous honorary doctorates.
He suffered
cancer of the bronchial tubes for the last two years of his life and died on Monday June 17 1996. He was survived by his wife Jehane R. Kuhn, his ex-wife Kathryn Muhs Kuhn, and their three children, Sarah, Elizabeth and Nathaniel.
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
Thomas Kuhn is most famous for his book
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is an analysis of the history of science [i]. ...
in which he presented the idea that science does not progress via a linear accumulation of new knowledge, but instead undergoes periodic revolutions which he calls "
paradigm shifts", in which the nature of scientific inquiry within a particular field is abruptly transformed. In
SSR, Kuhn also argues that rival paradigms are incommensurable -- that is, that it is not possible to understand one paradigm through the conceptual framework and terminology of another rival paradigm. For many critics, this thesis seemed to entail that theory choice is fundamentally irrational: if rival theories cannot be directly compared, then one cannot make a rational choice as to which one is better. Whether or not Kuhn's views had such relativistic consequences is the subject of much debate; Kuhn himself denied the accusation of relativism in the 3rd edition of
SSR, and sought to clarify his views to avoid further misinterpretation.
The book was originally printed as an article in the
International Encyclopedia of Unified Science, published by the logical positivists of the
Vienna Circle.
The enormous impact of Kuhn's work can be measured in the changes it brought about in the vocabulary of the philosophy of science: besides "paradigm shift", Kuhn raised the word "paradigm" itself from a term used in certain forms of linguistics to its current broader meaning, coined the term "normal science" to refer to the relatively routine, day-to-day work of scientists working within a paradigm, and was largely responsible for the use of the term "
scientific revolutions" in the plural, taking place at widely different periods of time and in different disciplines, as opposed to a single "Scientific Revolution" in the late
Renaissance.
Kuhn's work has been extensively used in social science; for instance, in the post-positivist/positivist debate within International Relations. Kuhn is credited as a foundational force behind the post-
Mertonian Sociology of Scientific Knowledge.
Bibliography
- Bird, Alexander. Thomas Kuhn. Princeton and London: Princeton University Press and Acumen Press, 2000. ISBN 1-902-68310-2
- Fuller, Steve. Thomas Kuhn: A Philosophical History for Our Times. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. ISBN 0-226-26894-2
- Kuhn, T.S. The Copernican Revolution: planetary astronomy in the development of Western thought. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1957. ISBN 0-674-17100-4
- Kuhn, T.S. The Function of Measurement in Modern Physical Science. Isis, 52: 161-193.
- Kuhn, T.S. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is an analysis of the history of science [i]. ...
. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962. ISBN 0-226-45808-3 - Kuhn, T.S. "The Function of Dogma in Scientific Research". Pp. 347-69 in A. C. Crombie . Scientific Change . New York and London: Basic Books and Heineman, 1963.
- Kuhn, T.S. The Essential Tension: Selected Studies in Scientific Tradition and Change. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1977. ISBN 0-226-45805-9
- Kuhn, T.S. Black-Body Theory and the Quantum Discontinuity, 1894-1912. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987. ISBN 0-226-45800-8
- Kuhn, T.S. The Road Since Structure: Philosophical Essays, 1970-1993. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. ISBN 0-226-45798-2
See also
- Important publications in philosophy of science
- History and philosophy of science
- John L. Heilbron
External links
- at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
