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Birth
Thomas Samuel Kuhn was born in Cincinnati, Ohio into a wealthy family: his father was an industrial engineer and his mother was upper-class. -
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Citations
Bird, A. (2018). "Thomas Kuhn," The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Retrieved from https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/thomas-kuhn/
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Kuhn, T. S., Hacking, I. (2012). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions: 50th Anniversary Edition. United Kingdom: University of Chicago Press.
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"Thomas Kuhn." (2017). Retrieved from https://www.famousscientists.org/thomas-kuhn/ -
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Pre-Paradigm Shift
In 1947, Kuhn educated an undergrad class on History of Science and he had a hard time making sense of Aristotle's ideas of motion. Kuhn understood it was hard for him to grasp the concept because his perspective was bias due to the advancements in the theories of motion, such as Isaac Newton's laws. Kuhn still pondered over the years why Aristotle's ideas seemed so inferior when it was obvious he was a smart man. This leads to Kuhn realizing the framework of science is susceptible to change. -
The Structure of Scientific Revolution
Thomas Kuhn published his ideas behind the framework of science, and it essentially states that science doesn't progress through a linear timeline when new knowledge is obtained. Instead, science usually goes through 3 steps; Prescience, new ideas that lack a core paradigm; Normal science, new evidence builds upon prescience; and finally the paradigm shift, where the theory becomes so influential that it changes the way of thinking in science and society. -
Kuhn's Paradigm Cycle [YouTibe]
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Incommensurability
In his work, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn referenced the term "incommensurability" when explaining the process of comparing two theories. To summarize, comparing two theories isn't as straightforward as it seems, considering the methods of comparison and evaluation change, observation evidence doesn't provide a common basis for comparison, and the language of theories from older generations are subject to change. -
Death
Thomas Kuhn died of cancer in Cambridge, Massachusetts
