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Thomas Kuhn Was Born
Kuhn was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, on 18 July 1922. He was the first of two children born to Samuel L. and Minette Kuhn, with a brother Roger born several years later. His father was a native Cincinnatian and his mother a native New Yorker. Kuhn’s father, Sam, was a hydraulic engineer, trained at Harvard University and at Massachusetts Institute of Technology prior to World War I. His father served in the Army Corps of engineers during WWI. -
Attending Harvard University
Kuhn began college Harvard College in the fall of 1940, following his father’s and uncles’ footsteps. At Harvard, he participated in various organizations. During his first year, Kuhn took a yearlong philosophy course. In the first semester, he studied Plato and Aristotle, while in the second semester, he studied Descartes, Spinoza, Hume, and Kant. He didn't have the time for another Philosophy class. However, he attended several of George Sarton’s lectures on the history of science. -
Undergraduate at Harvard
In the fall of his sophomore year, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and Kuhn expedited his undergraduate education by going to summer school. The physics department focused on teaching predominantly electronics, and Kuhn followed suit. In 1943, he graduated from Harvard summa cum laude. -
Work After College
After graduation, he worked for the Radio Research Laboratory located in Harvard’s biology building. The job procured for Kuhn a deferment from the draft. After a year, he requested a transfer to England and then to the continent, where he worked in association with the U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development. The trip was Kuhn’s first trip abroad. Kuhn realized that he did not like radar work, which led him to reconsider whether he wanted to continue as a physicist. -
Masters at Harvard
After V.E. day in 1945, Kuhn returned to Harvard. As the war ended with the dropping of atomic bombs on Japan, Kuhn activated an earlier acceptance into graduate school and began studies in the physics department. Although Kuhn persuaded the department to allow him to take philosophy courses during his first year, he again chose the pragmatic course and focused on physics. In 1946, Kuhn passed the general examinations and received a master’s degree in physics. -
Doctorate at Harvard
Thomas Kuhn earned his doctorate in 1949. He completed it in physics, concerning an application of quantum mechanics to solid state physics. Kuhn was elected to the prestigious Society of Fellows at Harvard, another of whose members was W. V. Quine. -
Teaching at Harvard
After completing his PhD, until 1956, Kuhn taught a class in science for undergraduates in the humanities, as part of the General Education in Science curriculum. This course was centered around historical case studies, and this was Kuhn’s first opportunity to study historical scientific texts in detail. -
Teaching at UC Berkeley
In 1961 Kuhn became a full professor at the University of California at Berkeley to take up a post in history of science, but in the philosophy department. This enabled him to develop his interest in the philosophy of science. At Berkeley Kuhn’s colleagues included Stanley Cavell, who introduced Kuhn to the works of Wittgenstein, and Paul Feyerabend. With Feyerabend Kuhn discussed a draft of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions which was published in 1962. -
Publishing The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
Kuhn wrote The Structure of Scientific Revolutions while a graduate student in theoretical physics at Harvard. It was Initially published as a monograph in the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science, then in book form by the University of Chicago Press in 1962. It has sold some one million copies in 16 languages. Structure has also generated a good deal of controversy, and many of Kuhn's ideas have been powerfully challenged -
About the Book
Throughout thirteen succinct but thought-provoking chapters, Kuhn argued that science is not a steady, cumulative acquisition of knowledge. Instead, science is "a series of peaceful interludes punctuated by intellectually violent revolutions" [Nicholas Wade, writing for Science], which he described as "the tradition-shattering complements to the tradition-bound activity of normal science." After such revolutions, "one conceptual world view is replaced by another" -
About the Book (Continued)
The Kuhnian argument that a scientific community is defined by its allegiance to a single paradigm has especially resonated throughout the multiparadigmatic social sciences, whose community members are often accused of paradigmatic physics envy. Kuhn suggested that questions about whether a discipline is or is not a science can be answered only when members of a scholarly community who doubt their status achieve consensus about their past and present accomplishments. -
The End
Thomas Kuhn was named a Guggenheim Fellow in 1954 and was awarded the George Sarton Medal in the History of Science in 1982. He held honorary degrees from institutions that included Columbia University and the universities of Notre Dame, Chicago, Padua, and Athens. He suffered from cancer during the last years of his life and died on Monday, June 17, 1996, at the age of 73 at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was survived by his wife and three children. -
Video on Kuhn's Cycle
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Reference 1
Bird, Alexander. “Thomas Kuhn.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Stanford University, 31 Oct. 2018, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/thomas-kuhn/. -
Reference 2
Marcum, James A. “Thomas S. Kuhn.” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Baylor University, n.d., https://www.iep.utm.edu/kuhn-ts/. -
Reference 3
“Thomas Kuhn.” Thomas Kuhn, University of Kentucky, n.d., https://www.uky.edu/~eushe2/Pajares/Kuhnsnap.html.
