Thomas Kuhn

Kuhn obtained his Ph.D in physics from Harvard University in 1949 and taught a course in the history of science at Harvard from 1948 to 1956. After leaving Harvard, Kuhn taught at the University of California, Berkeley until 1964, at Princeton University until 1979 and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) until 1991.

Kuhn is most famous for his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (SSR), in which he presented the idea that science does not evolve gradually toward truth, but instead undergoes periodic revolutions which he calls "paradigm shifts." The enormous impact of Kuhn's work can be measured in the revolution it brought about even in the vocabulary of the history of science: besides "paradigm shifts," Kuhn raised the word "paradigm" itself from a linguists' term 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, as against a single "Scientific Revolution" in the late Renaissance.

Selected works

• Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1962 - ISBN 0226458083.

Referenced By