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Beginnings
Thomas Samuel Kuhn was born on July 18, 1922 in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA into an affluent family. Kuhn attended 4 private schools growing up. Being a straight a student, he was admitted to Harvard University. He graduated with a BS in Physics summa cum laude (with highest honor) in 1943. -
Kuhn’s Take on Nicolaus Copernicus’ Revolution
Kuhn offered students was The Copernican Revolution. He scrutinized Nicolaus Copernicus’s famous book De revolutionibus with its bold claim that the earth orbits the sun. He claimed, with some justification, that Copernicus’s model was no more accurate and no simpler in its portrayal of heavenly bodies. Kuhn believed Copernicus’s model was ultimately preferred because it was more pleasing to its audience. Kuhn’s book has proven to be a keeper, the Copernican Revolution, printed 24 times. -
Incommensurability
Kuhn used the word incommensurable to describe paradigms that represent wholly different world views of the same subject – for example, the mechanics of Aristotle vs Newton, which differ so drastically that there is little common ground between them. While a whole number such as 1 and a fraction such as 1/3 are on a common scale (you need three of one to exactly equal the other) there is no common scale between a whole number and an irrational number like √2. -
Paradigm shift video
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The Paradigm Shift
Kuhn presented his notion of a paradigm shift in his influential book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Kuhn contrasts paradigm shifts, which characterize a scientific revolution, to the activity of normal science, which he describes as scientific work done within a prevailing framework or paradigm. Paradigm shifts arise when the dominant paradigm under which normal science operates is rendered incompatible with new phenomena, facilitating the adoption of a new paradigm. -
Cites
“Paradigm Shift.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 4 Dec. 2019, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradigm_shift. “Home.” Famous Scientists, https://www.famousscientists.org/thomas-kuhn/.
