Thomas Kuhn
Edited by Howard Sankey (University of Melbourne)
About this topic
Summary | Thomas Samuel Kuhn (1922-1996) was a historian and philosopher of science whose extremely popular book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, has had a profound and enduring impact on the philosophy of science. In Structure, Kuhn proposed a model of scientific theory change according to which science advances by revolutionary displacement of the theoretical structures he called "paradigms". Kuhn's account of such scientific revolutions was controversial because it appeared to suggest that such theoretical change cannot be made on a rational basis due to the incommensurability of alternative paradigms. It also contains a challenge to the scientific realist view that scientific progress constitutes a continual progression toward the truth about the world. Kuhn continued to develop his ideas in later publications in a way which led to a moderation of his views about theory choice, though he retained his anti-realist view. He later claimed that science is governed by a set of epistemic values that provide the rationale for theory choice, though these values do not constitute an algorithm for theory choice. He also developed a refined view of the incommensurability thesis, according to which there is a translation failure between a narrow group of interdefined terms within competing theories, but this untranslatability does not prevent mutual understanding between advocates of rival theories. Kuhn is best known for his model of scientific theory change and some of the controversial philosophical ideas associated with this model. But he was also the author of several major works in the history of physics. |
Key works | Kuhn develops his model of scientific change in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, originally published in 1962. He discusses the idea of epistemic values in chapter 13 of The Essential Tension. Refined statements of many of his philosophical ideas may be found in the posthumous collection of his essays entitled The Road Since Structure. For general analysis of Kuhn's work see Alexander Bird's Thomas Kuhn and Paul Hoyningen-Huene's Reconstructing Scientific Revolutions. Two excellent collections of essays on Kuhn are Thomas Nickles' Thomas Kuhn and Vasso Kindi and Theodore Arabatzis Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions Revisited. |
Introductions | For an introduction to Kuhn, see Alexander Bird's entry on Kuhn in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. |
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