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The "Eureka" moment
While teaching a group of undergraduate humanities majors, he quickly found that when opening up a physics book of Aristotle, that he was so wrong. How could someone so smart be so wrong when it came to physics. One day it just clicked to him like a "AH-Ha" moment, where Aristotle physics of motion decribes a general position not a change in position. It was at this time he moved from working on a Ph.D in theoretical physics to philosophy of science. -
The Copernican Revolution
Kuhn published a book criticizing Copernicus's heliocentric model. Kuhn claimed that Copernicus's model was more revolutionary making than revolutionary. He believed that Copernicus's theory was more appealing, but no more accurate that Ptolemy's model. This and with Copernicus's model it made Ptolemy's Equant (a mathematical imporovision) which made it appealing for most philisophers to accept. -
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
It is in this book Kuhn published that he first describes his famous paradigm shift. In this book he lays out the foundation for future discussion. He defines terms such as "normal science" as well as what the role of a "scientific Community" is. He covers topics in this book that would be the backbone of his work. He describes the "resolution beyond revolution" where only scientific success is thought to be successful in periods of normal science. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yn8cCDtVd5w -
Black-Body Theory and the Quantum Discontinuity, 1894-1912
In this book Kuhn critiques physicist Max Planck. He believed that Planck had misread his earlier work. Kuhn details how the black body theory(previously known as the ultra violet catrastrophe) had been flawed by the lack of information of previous work. The black body theory revolutionized the quantum mechanics world. It is described as an object that emits electromagnetic wave length and produces ultraviolet rays, recieved as white light.
