Thomas Kuhn

By rschlem11

  • Early Years

    Thomas Samuel Kuhn was born on July 18, 1922, in Cincinnati, Ohio, to Minette Scroock Kuhn and Samuel L. Kuhn. He grew up in a liberal and intellectually stimulating environment, attending the Hessian Hills School in New York, which encouraged independent thinking. Kuhn discovered his passion for physics and mathematics at The Taft School in Watertown, from which he graduated in 1940.

  • School Years

    During his time at Harvard, Kuhn worked at the Radio Research Laboratory and the U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development, contributing to radar technology during World War II. His academic career began at Harvard, where he taught the history of science from 1948 to 1956, influenced by the university president James Conant. This period was crucial as it led Kuhn to transition from physics to the history and philosophy of science​

  • Copernican Revolution

    Kuhn published "The Copernican Revolution," which analyzed the 16th-century shift from the Ptolemaic to the Copernican model of the solar system. His work, "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions," introduced the concept of "paradigm shifts" and fundamentally changed the understanding of scientific progress. Kuhn argued that scientific fields undergo periodic, revolutionary changes rather than progressing in a linear, continuous manner.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uW5jCyJ2-YE