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Thomas Kuhn discovered incommensurability.
Kuhn discovered incommensurability as a graduate student while struggling with what appeared to be nonsensical passages in Aristotelian physics. He couldn't believe that someone as extraordinary as Aristotle could've written them. Eventually patterns in the disconcerting passages began to emerge,and then the text made sense to him: a Gestalt switch that resulted when he changed the meanings of some of the central terms. He saw this process of meaning changing as a method of historical recovery. -
Thomas Kuhn joined the Radio Research Laboratory’s theoretical group.
Kuhn's group was tasked with devising countermeasures against enemy radar. He was soon sent to work in a laboratory in the United Kingdom. Later he traveled with a Royal Air Force officer to France for a few weeks to study recently captured German radar installations, then carried on into Germany itself. -
Thomas Kuhn started his professor career.
Harvard had still not offered Kuhn tenure. He accepted an offer from the University of California at Berkeley, where he became an assistant professor in both the Philosophy and History Departments. -
Thomas Kuhn was given the position of associate Professor.
Kuhn was promoted to associate professor and given tenure. In the fall of that year, he began a one-year fellowship at Stanford University’s Center for Advanced Study. It was here he wrote a significant part of his most influential work "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions". -
Thomas Kuhn got promoted to Professor.
Kuhn was promoted to full professor of the History of Science at Berkeley. This actually infuriated him, because he wanted to be a professor of Philosophy. In the end, however, he agreed to accept the position in History. -
Thomas Kuhn described the Paradigm Shift.
The concept of the paradigm shift made Kuhn’s name. Kuhn first described the paradigm shift in his book "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions". The concept had been in his mind for many years, starting when he asked himself how an intelligent man like Aristotle could have absurd ideas about motion. It dawned on him that the framework of science in which Aristotle interpreted facts was entirely different from the framework of science. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yn8cCDtVd5w
