Thomas Samuel Kuhn
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Cover of a biography of Thomas Kuhn. |
Thomas Samuel Kuhn (
July 18,
1922 –
June 17,
1996) was an American intellectual who wrote extensively on the
history of science and developed several important notions in the
philosophy of science.
Descendant of a
Jewish family, Kuhn was born 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 (MIT) 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.
Thomas Kuhn is most famous for his book
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (SSR) (
1962) 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.
*Bird, Alexander.
Thomas Kuhn Princeton and London: Princeton University Press and Acumen Press, 2000.
*Fuller, Steve.
Thomas Kuhn: A Philosophical History for Our Times (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000.
*Kuhn, T.S.
The Copernican Revolution. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1957.
*Kuhn, T.S. The Function of Measurement in Modern Physical Science.
Isis, 52(1961): 161-193.
*Kuhn, T.S.
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962) ISBN 0226458083
*Kuhn, T.S. "The Function of Dogma in Scientific Research". Pp. 347-69 in A. C. Crombie (ed.).
Scientific Change (Symposium on the History of Science, University of Oxford, 9-15 July 1961). New York and London: Basic Books and Heineman, 1963.
*Kuhn, T.S.
The Essential Tension: Selected Studies in Scientific Tradition and Change (1977)
*Kuhn, T.S.
Black-Body Theory and the Quantum Discontinuity, 1894-1912. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987. ISBN 0226458008
*Kuhn, T.S.
The Road Since Structure: Philosophical Essays, 1970-1993. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. ISBN 0226457982
*
Important publications in philosophy of science*
History and philosophy of science*
John L. Heilbron*
Thomas Kuhn (Biography, Outline of Structure of Scientific Revolutions)
*
Thomas Kuhn, 73; Devised Science Paradigm (obituary by Lawrence Van Gelder,
New York Times,
19 June 1996)
*
Thomas S. Kuhn (obituary,
The Tech p9 vol 116 no 28,
26 June 1996)
*
Thomas Kuhn at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
