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Born
Thomas Kuhn was born to parents, Samuel L. Kuhn and Minette Stroock Kuhn in Cincinnati, Ohio. The American began his studies in physics and soon became one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century. -
Graduates
In 1943, Thomas Kuhn graduates summa cum laude from Harvard after studying physics. He continues his research on radar at Harvard and then in Europe. He receives his Master's in physics in 1946, and his doctorates in 1949, also in physics. -
Teaches History
Thomas Kuhn begins teaching history in the philosophy department of University of California at Berkeley. Here is where his true interest in philosophy begins. His colleagues introduce him to the works of Wittgenstein, and Paul Feyerabend. -
The Copernican Revolution
In 1957, Thomas Kuhn wrote his first book, The Copernican Revolution in which he studied the development of the heliocentric theory during the Renaissance. -
Paradigms
Kuhn also explained in his previously mentioned book, that paradigms dictate the experiments scientists conduct, and therefore an old paradigm can only be replaced by a new one. Kuhn revolutionized the way people thought about science, and his ideology spread to the social, political, and economic sciences. -
Revolutionary Science
Kuhn wrote that in normal science paradigms are not challenged or changed, but in revolutionary science they are both questioned, and changed. This is what is considered revisionary science, by this philosopher. -
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
Kuhn later wrote his second book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, and fun fact, got accused of plagiarism for it. In this book Kuhn discusses paradigms and the scientific method. The classic scientific method depended on widely accepted world views and suggested that scientists typically accept paradigms and extend their experiments in that direction, ultimately, Kuhn argued that this could cause some issues and theoretical problems that could leave a paradigm contradicted or inadequate -
Incommensurability
After writing The Structure of Scientific Theories, Thomas Kuhn spent a lot of his later years describing and studying incommensurability. The concept of incommensurability is the idea that there is no comparison between the old and new paradigms. In other words, there is no scientific progress in a scientific revolution. The structure of the old collapses, and the new paradigm must start from nothing. This idea is outlined well in this video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euE7PP_RUfk] -
Died
At age 73, Thomas Kuhn dies from throat and lung cancer in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He had suffered from throat and lung cancer for about 2 years. Kuhn's work continues to add to the philosophical discussion of today, and his theories live on.
