A Kuhnning Revolution: The Life and Work of Thomas Kuhn (1922-1996)

By W. Jacobson

  • Birthdate and Education (1922-1949)

    Birthdate and Education (1922-1949)
    Thomas Samuel Kuhn was born on 18 July, 1922 in Cincinnati, Ohio. He studied at Harvard, where he earned his bachelor’s degree in physics in 1943, his master’s degree in 1946 and a Ph.D. in 1949. His academic pursuits were initially accelerated to more closely align with the requirements of WWII. He spent time during his early summers at Harvard’s Radar Research Laboratory, developing radar countermeasures to support ongoing war efforts (Joel 93).

  • The Formulative Years (1950-1960)

    The Formulative Years (1950-1960)
    James Bryant Conant (then President of Harvard University) encouraged Kuhn to teach a course in the history of science, which led Kuhn down the path to change from physics to the history and philosophy of science (Bird 276). Kuhn also met Albert Einstein during his time teaching, and after observing differences between Theory of Relativity and Newtonian mechanics, he slowly developed a non-linear view towards paradigm shifts.

  • The Transformative Years (1962-1965)

    The Transformative Years (1962-1965)
    Kuhn began his pivotal change of scientific progress through The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (SSR), which introduced the idea of “paradigm shifts”. Through impactful discussions at a London conference in 1965 with Imre Lakatos, Alan Musgrave, Karl Popper, and Paul Feyerabend, he postured that science undergoes periodic revolutions instead of a linear accrual of data which changed today’s scientific framework (Bird 1).

  • SSR:RSS (1970-1991)

    SSR:RSS (1970-1991)
    Kuhn wrote SSR part two, opening on his original ideas and introduced incommensurability (and the Road Since Structure in 1991). This idea posits that rival paradigms can’t be easily judged due to varied ideas and criteria. This further developed his idea that scientific progress is a chaotic path of gleaned data through a series of new changes in how scientists understand and explore the world (Redyon 475).