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Thomas Kuhn's early years
Born in 1922. Went to Harvard where he ended up getting a doctorate in physics. Philosophy bored him originally but found his calling while reading writings in philosophy of science (Marcum) -
Move from Physics to Teaching
Physics proved to not be that interesting, so Kuhn took a job to teach undergraduates. He was given a period to do some research. He realized he had a hard time understanding Aristotles Physics and came to understand he had to adopt some of the ancient assumptions from Aristotle's time. It was from this realization he dedicated his life's work to becoming a philosopher of science. This monumental moment would lead Kuhn to his most famous concepts of paradigms and revolutions. (Marcum). -
Presents Key Ideas Publicly
Gave a lecture at Lovell Institute, talking on ideas that made him famous, starting with the public misunderstanding of how science work, how it's more than simply landing on facts. Kuhn explained how it's entire systems that end up changing, opposed to simply some scientists finding some new discovery. (Marcum) -
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Early Papers leading up to Structures
From the mid-50's to early 60's, Kuhn wrote three academic papers that laid a foundation for Kuhn's famous book on Structures. Of the three, one was specifically used to fully explain his concept of paradigms. Paradigms were a problem solving construct that was utilized by a whole science until problems could no longer be solved using it. These were not permanent, but replaceable, and if they were replaced it would be by something radically different. (Marcum) -
Birth of Kuhn's Paradigm Concept
Kuhn spent a year as a fellow at Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Science at Stanford where he got to observe two specialty sciences relate and interact with each other. What was important here was Kuhn noticed fundamental problems and practices could not be agreed upon. He concluded basically that they were working in two separate worlds, using different language, standards, and beliefs. This was the conceptual birth of Kuhn's paradigms. (Marcum) -
The Structure of Scientific Revolution is published
This was a new image of science. It was no longer just who discovered what and when. It was the whole process and how these processes change with new radical ideas and new problems to solve. The key format of science that was described by Kuhn was pre-paradigm, a moment of chaos and figuring things out. This is followed by normal science, where a paradigm is formed and all members are abiding by it in some fashion. Then it's extraordinary science, followed by a new normal (Marcum) -
Structures Continued
Two key concepts from Structures that must be mentioned due to their importance. World changing happens with a revolution. Not only is science done differently but it's done in a "different world". Often we take for granted all the assumptions that have been made in the past. The other term of importance is Incommensurability. It's the concept of different measures and different language makes communication near impossible between camps of different paradigms. (Marcum) -
Short Educational Video on Kuhn's Paradigm Concept
YouTube Sprightly Pedagogue. (2018). Kuhn's Cycle: Paradigms and Criticism. YouTube.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yn8cCDtVd5w -
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Transition to Evolutionary Philosophy of Science
Kuhn made the transition out of historical philosophy to evolutionary philosophy of science around the mid 1980's and into the 1990's. His work moved away from some of his key concepts of the past but heavily emphasized his ideas about incommensurability and lexicons. -
Published Works by Thomas Kuhn
Kuhn, T. (1957). The Copernican Revolution. Harvard University Press Kuhn, T. (1962). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. University of Chicago Press. Kuhn, T. (1978). Black-Body Theory and the Quantum Discontinuity, 1894-1912. Oxford University Press Kuhn, T. (1979). The Essential Tension: Selected Studies in Scientific Tradition and Change. The University of Chicago Press Kuhn, T. (2000). The Road Since Structure. University of Chicago Press. -
Death/Work Cited
Kuhn Died on June 6, 1996. All of the information I used for this timeline was from James Marcum from Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Marcum, J. (n.d.). Thomas S. Kuhn: (1922-1996). Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://iep.utm.edu/kuhn-ts/