Thomas Samuel Kuhn (surname ; July 18, 1922 – June 17, 1996) was an
AmericanThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
intellectual who wrote extensively on the
history of scienceScience is a body of empirical, theoretical, and practical knowledge about the natural world, produced by a global community of researchers making use of scientific methods, which emphasize the observation, explanation, and adequate prediction of real world phenomena by experiment...
and developed several important notions in the
sociologyThe sociology of scientific knowledge involves the study of science as a social activity, especially dealing "with the social conditions and effects of science, and with the social structures and processes of scientific activity." It consists of studying the development of a scientific field and...
and
philosophy of scienceThe philosophy of science is concerned with the assumptions, foundations, and implications of science. The field is defined by an interest in one of a set of "traditional" problems or an interest in central or foundational concerns in science...
.
Life
Thomas Kuhn was born in
Cincinnati, OhioCincinnati is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Hamilton County. The municipality is located north of the Ohio River at the Ohio-Kentucky border. The population within city limits was estimated to be 333,336 in 2008, making it the state's third largest city...
to Samuel L. Kuhn, an industrial engineer, and Minette Stroock Kuhn. He obtained his
B.S.A Bachelor of Science is an undergraduate academic degree awarded for completed courses that generally last three to five years ....
degree in
physicsPhysics is a natural science; it is the study of matter and its motion through spacetime and all that derives from these, such as energy and force...
from
Harvard UniversityHarvard University is a private university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts and a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1636 by the colonial Massachusetts legislature, Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and currently comprises ten separate academic units...
in 1943, and
M.S.A Master of Science is a postgraduate academic master's degree awarded by universities in a large number of countries...
and
Ph.D.Doctor of Philosophy, abbreviated PhD , for the Latin , meaning "teacher of philosophy", or alternatively, DPhil, for the equivalent , is an advanced academic degree awarded by universities...
degrees in physics in 1946 and 1949, respectively. As he states in the first few pages of the preface to the second edition of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, his three years of total academic freedom as a Harvard Junior Fellow were crucial in allowing him to switch from physics to the history (and philosophy) of science. He later taught a course in the history of science at Harvard from 1948 until 1956 at the suggestion of university president
James ConantJames Bryant Conant was a chemist, educational administrator, and government official. As thePresident of Harvard University he reformed it as a research institution.-Biography :...
. After leaving Harvard, Kuhn taught at the
University of California, BerkeleyThe University of California, Berkeley is a public research university located in Berkeley, California, United States. The oldest of the ten major campuses affiliated with the University of California, Berkeley offers some 300 undergraduate and graduate degree programs in a wide range of disciplines...
, in both the philosophy department and the history department, being named Professor of the
History of ScienceScience is a body of empirical, theoretical, and practical knowledge about the natural world, produced by a global community of researchers making use of scientific methods, which emphasize the observation, explanation, and adequate prediction of real world phenomena by experiment...
in 1961. At Berkeley, he wrote and published (in 1962) his best known and most influential work:
The Structure of Scientific RevolutionsThe Structure of Scientific Revolutions , by Thomas Kuhn, is an analysis of the history of science. Its publication was a landmark event in the sociology of knowledge, and popularized the terms paradigm and paradigm shift.-History:...
. In 1964, he joined
Princeton UniversityPrinceton University a private university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League and is considered one of the Colonial Colleges....
as the M. Taylor Pyne Professor of Philosophy and History of Science. In 1979, he joined the
Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyThe Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological research...
(MIT) as the
Laurance S. RockefellerLaurance Spelman Rockefeller was a venture capitalist, financier, philanthropist, a major conservationist and a prominent third-generation member of the Rockefeller family. He was the fourth child of John D. Rockefeller, Jr. and brother to John D...
Professor of Philosophy, remaining there until 1991. Kuhn interviewed and taped Danish physicist
Niels BohrNiels Henrik David Bohr was a Danish physicist who made fundamental contributions to understanding atomic structure and quantum mechanics, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922. Bohr mentored and collaborated with many of the top physicists of the century at his institute in...
the day before Bohr's death. The recording contains the last words of Niels Bohr caught on tape. In 1994, Kuhn was diagnosed with
cancerCancer is a class of diseases in which a group of cells display uncontrolled growth , invasion , and sometimes metastasis...
of the bronchial tubes, of which he died in 1996.
Thomas Kuhn was married twice, first to Kathryn Muhs (with whom he had three children) and later to Jehane Barton (Jehane R. Kuhn).
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (
SSR) was originally printed as an article in the
International Encyclopedia of Unified ScienceIn 1938 a new series of publications started in USA. It was the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science . An ambitious project never completed devoted to unified science...
, published by the
logical positivistsLogical positivism is a school of philosophy that combines empiricism, the idea that observational evidence is indispensable for knowledge of the world, with a version of rationalism incorporating mathematical and logico-linguistic constructs and deductions in epistemology.[See, e.g., : ...]
of the
Vienna CircleThe Vienna Circle was a group of philosophers who gathered around Moritz Schlick when he was called to the Vienna University in 1922, organized in a philosophical association, of which Schlick was chairman, named the Ernst Mach Society in honour of Ernst Mach...
. In this book, Kuhn argued that science does not progress via a linear accumulation of new knowledge, but undergoes periodic revolutions, also called "
paradigm shiftParadigm shift is the term first used by Thomas Kuhn in his influential book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions to describe a change in basic assumptions within the ruling theory of science...
s" (although he did not coin the phrase), in which the nature of scientific inquiry within a particular field is abruptly transformed. In general, science is broken up into three distinct stages. Prescience, which lacks a central paradigm, comes first. This is followed by "
normal scienceNormal Science is a concept originated by Thomas Samuel Kuhn and elaborated in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. The term refers to the routine work of scientists experimenting within a paradigm, slowly accumulating detail in accord with established broad theory, not actually challenging or...
", when scientists attempt to enlarge the central paradigm by "puzzle-solving". Thus, the failure of a result to conform to the paradigm is seen not as refuting the paradigm, but as the mistake of the researcher, contra
Popper'sSir Karl Raimund Popper, CH, FRS, FBA was an Austrian and British philosopher and a professor at the London School of Economics. He is considered one of the most influential philosophers of science of the 20th century, and also wrote extensively on social and political philosophy...
refutability criterion. As anomalous results build up, science reaches a
crisis, at which point a new paradigm, which subsumes the old results along with the anomalous results into one framework, is accepted. This is termed
revolutionary science.
In
SSR, Kuhn also argues that rival paradigms are
incommensurableCommensurability or incommensurability is a concept in the philosophy of science to describe comparisons between different unit of measurement. For example, a distance measured in kilometers and a volume of water measured in liters are incommensurable; one cannot convert miles to liters...
—that is, it is not possible to understand one paradigm through the conceptual framework and terminology of another rival paradigm. For many critics, for example
David StoveDavid Charles Stove , was an Australian philosopher of science.His work in philosophy of science included detailed criticisms of David Hume's inductive skepticism, as well as what he regarded as the irrationalism of his disciplinary contemporaries Karl Popper, Thomas Kuhn, Imre Lakatos, and Paul...
(
Popper and AfterPopper and After is a book by David Charles Stove first published by Pergamon Press in 1982. It was subtitled Four Modern Irrationalists...
, 1982), 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 Kuhn's views had such
relativisticRelativism is the idea that some elements or aspects of experience or culture are relative to, i.e., dependent on, other elements or aspects.Common statements that might be considered relativistic include:* "That's true for you but not for me."...
consequences is the subject of much debate; Kuhn himself denied the accusation of relativism in the third edition of
SSR, and sought to clarify his views to avoid further misinterpretation.
Freeman DysonFreeman John Dyson FRS is a British-born American theoretical physicist and mathematician, famous for his work in quantum field theory, solid-state physics, and nuclear engineering. Dyson is a member of the Board of Sponsors of . Dyson lives in Princeton, New Jersey, as he has for over fifty...
has quoted Kuhn as saying "I am not a Kuhnian!", referring to the
relativismRelativism is the idea that some elements or aspects of experience or culture are relative to, i.e., dependent on, other elements or aspects.Common statements that might be considered relativistic include:* "That's true for you but not for me."...
that some philosophers have developed based on his work.
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 "
paradigmThe word paradigm has been used in linguistics and science to describe distinct concepts....
" itself from a term used in certain forms of
linguisticsLinguistics is the scientific study of natural language. Linguistics encompasses a number of sub-fields. An important topical division is between the study of language structure and the study of meaning...
to its current broader meaning, coined the term "
normal scienceNormal Science is a concept originated by Thomas Samuel Kuhn and elaborated in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. The term refers to the routine work of scientists experimenting within a paradigm, slowly accumulating detail in accord with established broad theory, not actually challenging or...
" 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 revolutionsParadigm shift is the term first used by Thomas Kuhn in his influential book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions to describe a change in basic assumptions within the ruling theory of science...
" 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
RenaissanceThe Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Florence in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe...
. The frequent use of the phrase "paradigm shift" has made scientists more aware of and in many cases more receptive to paradigm changes, so that Kuhn’s analysis of the evolution of scientific views has by itself influenced that evolution.
Kuhn's work has been extensively used in social science; for instance, in the
post-positivistIn the philosophy of science, the term post-positivist has been used in two ways:1) To refer to scientific philosophies that arose after, and in reaction to, positivism...
/positivist debate within
International RelationsInternational relations or International studies represents the study of foreign affairs and global issues among states within the international system, including the roles of states, inter-governmental organizations , non-governmental organizations , and multinational corporations...
. Kuhn is credited as a foundational force behind the post-
MertonianRobert King Merton was a distinguished American sociologist perhaps best known for having coined the phrase "self-fulfilling prophecy," the explanation for how a belief or an expectation, correct or incorrect, affects the outcome of a situation or the way a person or a group will behave...
Sociology of Scientific KnowledgeThe sociology of scientific knowledge involves the study of science as a social activity, especially dealing "with the social conditions and effects of science, and with the social structures and processes of scientific activity." It consists of studying the development of a scientific field and...
.
A defense Kuhn gives against the objection that his account of science from
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions results in relativism can be found in an essay by Kuhn called "Objectivity, Value Judgment, and Theory Choice." In this essay, he reiterates five criteria from the penultimate chapter of
SSR that determine (or help determine, more properly) theory choice:
- - Accurate - empirically adequate with experimentation and observation
- - Consistent - internally consistent, but also externally consistent with other theories
- - Broad Scope - a theory's consequences should extend beyond that which it was initially designed to explain
- - Simple - the simplest explanation, principally similar to Occam's Razor
- - Fruitful - a theory should disclose new phenomena or new relationships among phenomena
He then goes on to show how, although these criteria admittedly determine theory choice, they are imprecise in practice and relative to individual scientists. According to Kuhn, "When scientists must choose between competing theories, two men fully committed to the same list of criteria for choice may nevertheless reach different conclusions." For this reason, basically, the criteria still are not "objective" in the usual sense of the word because individual scientists reach different conclusions with the same criteria due to valuing one criterion over another or even adding additional criteria for selfish or other subjective reasons. Kuhn then goes on to say, "I am suggesting, of course, that the criteria of choice with which I began function not as rules, which determine choice, but as values, which influence it." Because Kuhn utilizes the history of science in his account of science, his criteria or values for theory choice are often understood as descriptive normative rules (or more properly, values) of theory choice for the scientific community rather than prescriptive normative rules in the usual sense of the word "criteria," although there are many varied interpretations of Kuhn's account of science.
The Polanyi-Kuhn debate
Scientific historians and scholars have noted similarities between Kuhn's work and the work of
Michael PolanyiMichael Polanyi, FRS was a Hungarian–British polymath whose thought and work extended across physical chemistry, economics, and philosophy. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society and a Fellow of Merton College, Oxford.-Early life:Polanyi was born into a Jewish family...
. Although they used different terminologies, both scientists believed that scientists' subjective experiences made science a relativistic discipline. Polanyi lectured on this topic for decades before Kuhn published "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions."
Supporters of Polanyi charged Kuhn with plagiarism, as it was known that Kuhn attended several of Polanyi's lectures, and that the two men had debated endlessly over the epistemology of science before either had achieved fame. In response to these critics, Kuhn cited Polanyi in the second edition of "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions," and the two scientists agreed to set aside their differences in the hopes of enlightening the world to the dynamic nature of science. Despite this intellectual alliance, Polanyi's work was constantly interpreted by others within the framework of Kuhn's paradigm shifts, much to Polanyi's (and Kuhn's) dismay.
Honors
Kuhn was named a
Guggenheim FellowGuggenheim Fellowships are American grants that have been awarded annually since 1925 by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts." Each year, the foundation makes...
in 1954, and in 1982 was awarded the
George Sarton MedalThe George Sarton Medal, an award of the History of Science Society, has been awarded annually since 1955. It is awarded to a historian of science selected from the international scholarly community for a lifetime of scholarly achievement....
by the
History of Science SocietyThe History of Science Society is the primary professional society for the academic study of the history of science. It was founded in 1924 by George Sarton and Lawrence Joseph Henderson, primarily to support the publication of Isis, a journal of the history of science Sarton had started in 1912....
. He was also awarded numerous honorary doctorates.
See also
- American philosophy
American philosophy is the philosophical activity or output of Americans, both within the United States and abroad. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy notes that while American philosophy lacks a "core of defining features, American Philosophy can nevertheless be seen as both reflecting and...
- History and philosophy of science
The history and philosophy of science is an academic discipline that encompasses the philosophy of science and the history of science. Although many scholars in the field are trained primarily as either historians or as philosophers, there are degree-granting departments of HPS at several...
- John L. Heilbron
John Lewis Heilbron is an American historian of science best known for his work in the history of physics and the history of astronomy. He is Professor of History and Vice-Chancellor Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, senior research fellow at Worcester College, Oxford, and...
- Science In Society
Science In Society: An Introduction to Social Studies of Science is a 2004 book by Massimiano Bucchi. The book explains how science operates, what sociologists find interesting about it, and how scientific knowledge is generated. There are chapters on the importance of science in modern life,...
- List of American philosophers
External links