Thomas Kuhn: July 18, 1922 - June 17, 1996

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  • Thomas Kuhn Birth/Death dates and Description

    Thomas Kuhn Birth/Death dates and Description

    Thomas Kuhn was born on the 18th of July 1922 in Cincinnati, Ohio and died on the 17th of June 1996 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was an American historian and philosopher of science. (Encyclopedia Britannica, 2024).
  • Kuhn's educational achievements

    Kuhn's educational achievements

    Kuhn obtained his bachelor's and master's degrees in physics at Harvard University in the years 1943 and 1946 respectively. He then obtained a Ph.D. in History of science in the year 1949 from the same university. (Encyclopedia Britannica, 2024).
  • The Copernican revolution

    The Copernican revolution

    Thomas Kuhn published his first book titled "The Copernican Revolution" in 1957. In this book, Kuhn not only talks about the change from the Ptolemaic to the Copernican planetary system, although that was the central part of the story, but also the change from Aristotelian to Newtonian cosmology (Swerdlow, 2004).
  • The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

    The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

    Thomas Kuhn is popularly known for his second book which was a landmark publication. This book is titled "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" and it was published in 1962. In this book, he introduced the concepts like paradigm shift, scientific revolutions, and incommensurability. He also did his best to challenge scientism (p. 12) (Preston, 2008).

  • Kuhn's contributions

    Kuhn's book revolutionized the view of the history and philosophy of science and his concept of paradigm shifts was extended to other disciplines such as sociology, political science, economics and business management. According to Kuhn, a shift in the paradigm alters the fundamental concepts underlying research and inspires new standards of evidence, new research techniques, and new pathways of theory and experiment that are radically incommensurate with the old ones. (Encyclopedia Britannica).
  • Kuhn's later works

    Kuhn's later works

    Kuhn's later works included a collection of essays: The Essential Tension published in 1977, and the technical study Black-Body Theory and the Quantum Discontinuity published in 1978. (Encyclopedia Britannica, 2024).

  • Works Cited

    Swerdlow, N. M. "An Essay on Thomas Kuhn's First Scientific Revolution, the Copernican Revolution." Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 148, no. 1, 2004, pp. 64-120. https://www.proquest.com/docview/220896767?parentSessionId=y9jBx2gaT5UbxFP8lR504f8MrwSAL03Xy3zAPokGX4s%3D&pq-origsite=primo&accountid=8289&sourcetype=Scholarly%20Journals

  • Works Cited

    Preston, John. Kuhn's 'the Structure of Scientific Revolutions' : A Reader's Guide, Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2008. https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/apus/reader.action?docID=1644308&ppg=23

  • Works Cited

    Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Thomas S. Kuhn". Encyclopedia Britannica, 14 Jul. 2024. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Thomas-S-Kuhn