Kuhn

Thomas Samuel Kuhn (July 1922 – June 1996)

By robertsemonich12

  • Birth & Early education

    Thomas Samuel Kuhn was born July 18, 1922 in Cincinnati, Ohio. Son of both Samuel L. and Minette Kuhn. Kuhn's family moved to a city outside of Manhattan, New York. Kuhn also attended the The Taft School in Watertown, Connecticut for his last two years of high school where he graduated third in his class. He followed in his fathers footsteps and went to Harvard College.

  • Leading up to "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions"

    At Harvard Kuhn received both his master’s and doctorate in physics. Kuhn began to focus on the history of science and was named "assistant professorship in general education and the history of science". He began to focus on the history of astronomy and published his first book in 1957, "The Copernican Revolution".

  • The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

    Kuhn published his major work "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" in 1962 with a 2nd edition in 1970. He proposed a opposing idea about how to critically analyze science and its process. Kuhn addressed science doesn't move in linear fashion, but goes through "paradigm shifts". Which occurs when science can't further explain away anomalies thus goes through a scientific revolution into a new understanding "paradigm".

  • Incommensurability

    Besides paradigms, incommensurability was another key topic in "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions". Incommensurability can be described as scientists using contrasting ideas, or scientific methods which can be confusing leading to miscommunication. Kuhn thought of this couldn't be solved by just using the same nomenclature, rather it was a fundamental misunderstanding.

  • Death

    Kuhn retired from teaching in 1991 at MIT. He died in 1996 in Cambridge, Massachusetts after battling lung cancer.

  • Works

    • Kuhn, T. S. (1957). The Copernican Revolution: Planetary Astronomy in the Development of Western Thought. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
    • Kuhn, T. S. (1962). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

  • References

  • References cont.