Biography of Thomas Kuhn

Thomas Samuel Kuhn (surname pronounced /kun/; July 18, 1922 June 17, 1996) was an American
intellectual who wrote extensively on the history of science and developed several important notions in the
philosophy of science.

Life
Thomas Kuhn was born in Cincinnati, Ohio to Samuel L. Kuhn, an industrial engineer, and Minette Stroock
Kuhn. He obtained his bachelor's degree in physics from Harvard University in 1943, and master's and Ph.D in
physics in 1946 and 1949, respectively. He later taught a course in the history of science at Harvard from 1948
until 1956 at the suggestion of university president James Conant. After leaving Harvard, Kuhn taught at the
University of California, Berkeley, in both the philosophy department and the history department, being named
Professor of the History of Science in 1961. At Berkeley, he wrote and published (in 1962) his best known and
most influential work: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. In 1964, he joined Princeton University as the M.
Taylor Pyne Professor of Philosophy and History of Science. In 1979, he joined the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology (MIT) as the Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Philosophy, remaining there until 1991. Kuhn
interviewed and taped Danish physicist Niels Bohr the day before Bohr's death. The recording contains the last
words of Niels Bohr caught on tape. In 1994, he was diagnosed with cancer of the bronchial tubes, of which he
died in 1996.

Kuhn was married twice, first to Kathryn Muhs (with whom he had three children) and later to Jehane Barton
(Jehane R. Kuhn).


The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
Main article: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (SSR), Kuhn argued that science does not progress via a linear
accumulation of new knowledge, but undergoes periodic revolutions, also called "paradigm shifts" (although he
did not coin the phrase), in which the nature of scientific inquiry within a particular field is abruptly
transformed. In general, science is broken up into three distinct stages. Prescience, which lacks a central
paradigm, comes first. This is followed by "normal science", when scientists attempt to enlarge the central
paradigm by "puzzle-solving". Thus, the failure of a result to conform to the paradigm is seen not as refuting
the paradigm, but as the mistake of the researcher, contra Popper's refutability criterion. As anomalous results
build up, science reaches a crisis, at which point a new paradigm, which subsumes the old results along with
the anomalous results into one framework, is accepted. This is termed revolutionary science.

In SSR, Kuhn also argues that rival paradigms are incommensurablethat is, it is not possible to understand
one paradigm through the conceptual framework and terminology of another rival paradigm. For many critics,
for example David Stove (Popper and After, 1982), this thesis seemed to entail that theory choice is
fundamentally irrational: if rival theories cannot be directly compared, then one cannot make a rational choice
as to which one is better. Whether or not Kuhn's views had such relativistic consequences is the subject of
much debate; Kuhn himself denied the accusation of relativism in the third edition of SSR, and sought to clarify
his views to avoid further misinterpretation. Freeman Dyson has quoted Kuhn as saying "I am not a Kuhnian!",
referring to the relativism that some philosophers have developed based on his work.

The book was originally printed as an article in the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science, published by
the logical positivists of the Vienna Circle.

The enormous impact of Kuhn's work can be measured in the changes it brought about in the vocabulary of the
philosophy of science: besides "paradigm shift", Kuhn raised the word "paradigm" itself from a term used in
certain forms of linguistics to its current broader meaning, coined the term "normal science" to refer to the
relatively routine, day-to-day work of scientists working within a paradigm, and was largely responsible for the
use of the term "scientific revolutions" in the plural, taking place at widely different periods of time and in
different disciplines, as opposed to a single "Scientific Revolution" in the late Renaissance. The frequent use of
the phrase "paradigm shift" has made scientists more aware of and in many cases more receptive to paradigm
changes, so that Kuhns analysis of the evolution of scientific views has by itself influenced that evolution.

Kuhn's work has been extensively used in social science; for instance, in the post-positivist/positivist debate
within International Relations. Kuhn is credited as a foundational force behind the post-Mertonian Sociology of
Scientific Knowledge.

A defense Kuhn gives against the objection that his account of science from The Structure of Scientific
Revolutions results in relativism can be found in an essay by Kuhn called "Objectivity, Value Judgment, and
Theory Choice." In this essay, he reiteriates five criteria from the penultimate chapter of SSR that determine
(or help determine, more properly) theory choice:
1 - Accurate - empirically adequate with experimentation and observation
2 - Consistent - internally consistent, but also externally consistent with other theories
3 - Broad Scope - a theory's consequencies should extend beyond that which it was initially designed to explain
4 - Simple - the simplest explanation, principally similar to Occam's Razor
5 - Fruitful - a theory should disclose new phenomena or new relationships among phenomena


He then goes on to show how, although these criteria admittedly determine theory choice, they are imprecise in
practice and relative to individual scientists. According to Kuhn, "When scientists must choose between
competing theories, two men fully committed to the same list of criteria for choice may nevertheless reach
different conclusions." For this reason, basically, the criteria still are not "objective" in the usual sense of the
word because individual scientists reach different conclusions with the same criteria due to valuing one criterion
over another or even adding additional criteria for selfish or other subjective reasons. Kuhn then goes on to
say, "I am suggesting, of course, that the criteria of choice with which I began function not as rules, which
determine choice, but as values, which influence it." Because Kuhn utilizes the history of science in his account
of science, his criteria or values for theory choice are often understood as descriptive normative rules (or more
properly values) of theory choice for the scientific community rather than prescriptive normative rules in the
usual sense of the word "criteria," although there are many varied interpretations of Kuhn's account of science.


The Polanyi-Kuhn debate
Scientific historians and scholars have noted similarities between Kuhn's work and the work of Michael Polanyi.
Although they used different terminologies, both scientists believed that scientists' subjective experiences made
science a relativistic discipline. Polanyi lectured on this topic for decades before Kuhn published "The Structure
of Scientific Revolutions."

Supporters of Polanyi charged Kuhn with plagiarism, as it was known that Kuhn attended several of Polanyi's
lectures, and that the two men had debated endlessly over the epistemology of science before either had
achieved fame. In response to these critics, Kuhn cited Polanyi in the second edition of "The Structure of
Scientific Revolutions," and the two scientists agreed to set aside their differences in the hopes of enlightening
the world to the dynamic nature of science. Despite this intellectual alliance, Polanyi's work was constantly
interpreted by others within the framework of Kuhn's paradigm shifts, much to Polanyi's (and Kuhn's) dismay.


Honors
Kuhn was named a Guggenheim Fellow in 1954, and in 1982 was awarded the George Sarton Medal by the
History of Science Society. He was also awarded numerous honorary doctorates.


Bibliography
Bird, Alexander. Thomas Kuhn. Princeton and London: Princeton University Press and Acumen Press, 2000.
ISBN 1-902683-10-2
Fuller, Steve.Thomas Kuhn: A Philosophical History for Our Times. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000.
ISBN 0-226-26894-2
Sal Restivo, The Myth of the Kuhnian Revolution. Sociological Theory, Vol. 1, (1983), 293-305.
Hoyningen-Huene, Paul (1993): Reconstructing Scientific Revolutions: Thomas S. Kuhn's Philosophy of Science.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Kuhn, T.S. The Copernican Revolution: planetary astronomy in the development of Western thought.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1957. ISBN 0-674-17100-4
Kuhn, T.S. The Function of Measurement in Modern Physical Science. Isis, 52(1961): 161-193.
Kuhn, T.S. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962. ISBN 0-226-
45808-3
Kuhn, T.S. "The Function of Dogma in Scientific Research". Pp. 347-69 in A. C. Crombie (ed.). Scientific Change
(Symposium on the History of Science, University of Oxford, 9-15 July 1961). New York and London: Basic
Books and Heineman, 1963.
Kuhn, T.S. The Essential Tension: Selected Studies in Scientific Tradition and Change. Chicago and London:
University of Chicago Press, 1977. ISBN 0-226-45805-9
Kuhn, T.S. Black-Body Theory and the Quantum Discontinuity, 1894-1912. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1987. ISBN 0-226-45800-8
Kuhn, T.S. The Road Since Structure: Philosophical Essays, 1970-1993. Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
2000. ISBN 0-226-45798-2

See also
History and philosophy of science
John L. Heilbron

References
^ Alexander Bird, Thomas Kuhn, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2004.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/thomas-kuhn/
^ Horgan, John (May 1991). "Profile: Reluctant Revolutionary". Scientific American: 40.
^ Dyson, Freeman (May 6, 1999). The Sun, the Genome, and the Internet: Tools of Scientific Revolutions.
Oxford University Press, Inc., 144. ISBN 978-0195129427.
^ Kuhn, Thomas (1977). The Essential Tension: Selected Studies in Scientific Tradition and Change. University
of Chicago Press, 320-39.
^ Kuhn, Thomas (1977). The Essential Tension: Selected Studies in Scientific Tradition and Change. University
of Chicago Press, 320-39.
^ Kuhn, Thomas (1977). The Essential Tension: Selected Studies in Scientific Tradition and Change. University
of Chicago Press, 320-39.
^ Moleski, Martin X. "Polanyi vs. Kuhn: Worldviews Apart." The Polanyi Society. Missouri Western State
University. Accessed 20 March 2008.
http://www.missouriwestern.edu/orgs/polanyi/TAD%20WEB%20ARCHIVE/TAD33-2/TAD33-2-fnl-pg8-24-
pdf.pdf
Black-body theory and the quantum discontinuity: 1894-1912 (1978)
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