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Beginning of Life
Born on July 18, 1922, Thomas Samuel Kuhn was a philosopher who introduced the paradigm shift language and culture to us. Thomas’s father was an investment consultant and industrial engineer. Thomas’s mother on the other hand, known as Minette Kuhn, came from a wealthy family who graduated from Harvard and MIT. She drafted unpaid articles. Both of Tom’s parents were active in left-wing politics and both were of Jewish descent, although neither of them practiced their religion. -
Education
Thomas Kuhn went to Lincoln school for his elementary studies. They focused more on independent thinking. Eventually he learned to read from the help of his father. Beginning in the sixth grade, Kuhn’s family moved to Croton-on-Hudson, a small town about fifty miles from Manhattan, and the adolescent Kuhn attended the progressive Hessian Hills School. In 1943, he graduated from Harvard, receiving a M.S. and PhD degree. Kuhn was extremely interested in Physics and mathematics. -
Thomas Kuhn's Work History
In 1943, Thomas Kuhn started his career at the Radio Research Laboratory at Harvard. Thomas also had a job at the U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development in Europe. Most of Kuhn’s subsequent work in philosophy was spent in articulating and developing the ideas in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions although some of these, such as the thesis of incommensurability, underwent transformation in the process. Kuhn had four distinct phases for the model he created. -
The Paradigm
Popper was 60 years old, still going strong with his work, when Thomas Kuhn published The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Kuhn believed that The Structure of Scientific Revolutions caught the interest of social scientist first. His idea focused more on the fact that science was influenced by social class, politics, and racial bias. Kuhn suggested that until there is a significant paradigm shift, scientists “discover” what they expect to see. -
Thomas Kuhn's Death
Thomas Kuhn on June 19, 1996, at the age of seventy-three passed away, at his home in Cambridge, MA. His theory of scientific revolution was an influential landmark of the 20th-century history. Kuhn was a contributor to understanding how scientific views are supported and discounted over time. Thomas had cancer in his bronchial tubes and throat for about two years before passing away.