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Born on July 18th, 1922, in Cincinnati, Ohio -
Harvard - BS in Physics summa cum laude
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Harvard - master’s degree in physics
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Harvard – doctorate
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Wrote first book The Copernican Revolution: Planetary Astronomy in the Development of Western Thought
Kuhn, Thomas H. The Copernican Revolution: Planetary Astronomy in the Development of Western Thought. Harvard Univ, 1957. -
Professor of the History of Science at Berkely
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While studying the history of science and current scientific norms, he discovered that science was evolving in phases, “normal science” and revolutionary. These two fundamentally different approaches to science he discovered were quite different. -
Once these anomalies piled up scientist looked outside of their “standard operating procedures” to find any different and “outside the box” views of solving these anomalies. This willingness to try anything is the point at which Kuhn saw the revolution of scientific thinking and operations. This is what he says leads to a “Paradigm Shift”.
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Wrote second book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
Kuhn, Thomas. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1962. -
Thomas Kuhn began his career as a Physicist who later studied the history of science. He was interested in how scientists operated within scientific thinking.
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The “normal science” which was cumulative knowledge based, typical puzzle solving, almost standard operating procedure which he called a paradigm. He realizes that this way of scientific thinking and operating doesn’t always get it right, and anomalies occur.
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Thomas Kuhn introduced the concept of incommensurability, which describes paradigms of the same subject that do not share a common measure. [youtube](https:/www.youtube.com/watch?v=L70T4pQv7P8) -
Thomas Kuhn introduced the term paradigm shift into our culture, the fundamental change in approach to past assumptions. -
M. Taylor Pyne Professor of Philosophy and History of Science
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Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Philosophy at MIT
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Died Jun 17th, 1996, at the age of 73 of throat and lung cancer.
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“Thomas Kuhn - Biography, Facts and Pictures.” Famousscientists.org, 2017, www.famousscientists.org/thomas-kuhn/.