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Thomas Kuhn
Thomas Samuel Kuhn was born in Cincinnati, OH in 1922. His father was an industrial engineer and undoubtedly influenced Thomas gravitating towards science. -
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Thomas Kuhn' Life
Thomas Samuel Kuhn
1922-1996 -
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Education
“In 1943, he graduated from Harvard summa cum laude” (Bird, 2018)
“He gained his master’s degree in physics in 1946, and his doctorate in 1949, also in physics (concerning an application of quantum mechanics to solid state physics). Kuhn was elected to the prestigious Society of Fellows at Harvard” (Bird, 2018). -
The Copernican Revolution
"His first book concerned the Copernican revolution in planetary astronomy (1957). This book grew out of the teaching he had done on James Conant’s General Education in Science curriculum at Harvard but also presaged some of the ideas of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" (Bird, 2018) -
Kuhn becomes professor at UC Berkeley
"In 1961 Kuhn became a full professor at the University of California at Berkeley, having moved there in 1956 to take up a post in history of science, but in the philosophy department. This enabled him to develop his interest in the philosophy of science. At Berkeley Kuhn’s colleagues included Stanley Cavell, who introduced Kuhn to the works of Wittgenstein, and Paul Feyerabend" (Bird, 2018) -
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
"With Feyerabend Kuhn discussed a draft of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions which was published in 1962 in the series ‘International Encyclopedia of Unified Science’… The central idea of this extraordinarily influential—and controversial—book is that the development of science is driven, in normal periods of science, by adherence to what Kuhn called a ‘paradigm” (Bird, 2018). -
Later published works
“A collection of Kuhn’s essays in the philosophy and history of science was published in 1977, with the title The Essential Tension taken from one of Kuhn’s earliest essays in which he emphasizes the importance of tradition in science. The following year saw the publication of his second historical monograph Black-Body Theory and the Quantum Discontinuity, concerning the early history of quantum mechanics” (Bird, 2018) -
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Citation
Bird, Alexander, "Thomas Kuhn", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2018 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.) https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/thomas-kuhn/#LifeCare
