Thomas Kuhn

  • Birth

    Thomas Kuhn is born on July 18 1922
  • Prescience

    Thomas Kuhn argued that there were primarily four stages of science. The first, he argued, was Prescience (or Pre-paradigmatic). He argued that this is where a theory would begin to develop a paradigm of it's own, before it became popular by replacing the current paradigm.
  • The Structure of Scientifric Revolutions

    Thomas Kuhn wrote and published his book detailing his work on the way scientific knowledge develops in 1962.
  • Paradigm Shifts

    Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions set forth his theory that scientific discovery progressed not in a slow and steady increasing slope, but rather that it would plateau and then eventually create a paradigm shift in which the accepted theories would be deemed incorrect and replaced with new ones.
  • Normal Science

    Kuhn argued that after Prescience came Normal Science, wherein one paradigm replaced another and became popular and would be tested widely. This is where the paradigm would begin to become accepted, and through testing would become widely accepted as, at the least, a possible answer to whatever question the scientist or scientists who created it sought to answer.
  • Incommensurability

    Kuhn argued one could not examine one paradigm through the lens of another. He argued that due to the nature of a paradigm, it would be impossible to gauge evidence correctly unless working within the paradigm in question.
  • Crisis and Revolution

    Kuhn argued that after a phase of normal science, there is a phase of crisis, where the theory which has become widely accepted is challenged. From here it can return to normal science or move on to a scientific revolution wherein it will become a new paradigm with new theories.