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Thomas Kuhn's Early Years
Thomas Kuhn was born in Cincinnati, OH 18 July, 1922.
His parents called him Tom for short. His brother Roger was three years younger than him. His parents were Jewish and both were heavily involved with politics. Tom's father was an industrial engineer and investment consultant. He graduated from Harvard and MIT, and fought in WWI. His family moved to New York when he was just a few months old. -
School
In the sixth through ninth grade Tom learned to love mathematics. He also hoped to join the leftist American Student Union. He was informed when he swore in he would never fight America. After battling over this and talking to his father, he decided not to go for it. He left Hessian in 1937 -
War Work
Kuhn joined the radio Research Laboratory's theoretical group. He was tasked with devising countermeasures against enemy radar. Kuhn arrived in liberated Paris on August 25, 1944, where he saw General de Gaulle’s convoy entering the Champs-Élysées.Upon his return he graduated with a doctorate in 1949.His PhD thesis was The Cohesive Energy of Monovalent Metals as a Function of the Atomic Quantum Defects. -
WWII
During the sophomore year at Harvard he finally felt like he belonged. Once America entered the War he decided to attend more classes. He graduated his BS in Physics with highest honor. He spend his final year as head of the editorial board of Harvard Crimson, the college newspaper.Upon his return he from the war he graduated with a doctorate in 1949.His PhD thesis was The Cohesive Energy of Monovalent Metals as a Function of the Atomic Quantum Defects. -
Aristotle in his Physics
Kuhn recognized he could not comprehend Aristotle’s notions of motion because his modern physics education was not allowing him. Kuhn was studying Aristotle’s ideas from the perspective of a physicist familiar with Isaac Newton’s much later ideas. When Kuhn acquired the approach of the principal science and philosophy of the Ancient Greeks, Aristotle’s Physics began to make much more sense. -
Nicolaus Copernicus Revolution
Kuhn justified, that Copernicus’s model was no more different than that of Claudius Ptolemy 1,400 years initially. Kuhn believed Copernicus’s model was eventually preferred because it was more agreeable to its spectators. Surely the fact that in Copernicus’s model there was no need for Ptolemy’s equant was artistically attractive. In quote “The equant was an extremely clever mathematical improvisation Ptolemy devised to make his theory of planetary movements work.” -
Advanced Study
In 1958, he was promoted to associate professor and given tenure. In the fall of that year, he began a one-year fellowship at Stanford University’s Center for Advanced Study. Here is where he wrote a momentous part of his most prominent work The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. -
The Paradigm Shift
Kuhn originally defined the paradigm shift in his 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. He had the thought for quite some time, beginning when he asked himself how Aristotle was able to have unusual ideas about motion. It occurred to him, the structure of science in which Aristotle decoded evidences was completely distinctive from the structure of science we use today, courtesy of Galileo Galilei and Isaac Newton. The change of structure was the paradigm shift. -
George Sarton Medal
In 1982 Thomas Samuel Kuhn was awarded the George Sarton Medal by the History of Science Society for a lifetime of scholarly achievement. He is now considered one of the greatest. -
Kuhn's Death
Kuhn suffered from cancer during the last years of his life. Thomas Kuhn died on Monday, June 17, 1996, at the age of 73 at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was survived by his wife and three children