What Are Scientific Revolutions?

In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (“Structure,” 1962), Thomas Kuhn (1922–1996) challenged the view that science advances through a steady accumulation of knowledge. Instead, he argued that its history is punctuated by radical “paradigm shifts.” Less widely recognized is that Kuhn’s own account of these shifts also changed significantly over time. Structure’s key claims include: 1. Science is an empirical investigation of nature. Its distinctive progress lies in an increasingly effective capacity to solve technical puzzles within clearly defined standards of success and failure. 2. Science is fundamentally social. Scientific knowledge develops through the practices, commitments, and judgments of scientific communities. 3. Scientific progress resembles biological evolution. It advances through processes of development and transformation rather than along a simple, predetermined path. Twenty years after Structure (in “What Are Scientific Revolutions?,” c. 1981), Kuhn examines three major historical transformations involving theories of motion, the voltaic cell, and black-body radiation. Through these cases, he develops a more philosophical account of scientific change and illustrates his emerging theory of taxonomic structures. Please read “What Are Scientific Revolutions?” The essay is twenty pages long and has illustrations; it may take forty or so minutes to read. The Editors’ Introduction to The Road since Structure (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), especially the first five pages, gives an overview of Kuhn’s later attempts to rethink and extend his own “revolutionary” hypotheses. You may find these additional resources helpful – they are not required: Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (IEP) – Thomas S. Kuhn “Thomas Kuhn,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Both offer a chronological reconstruction of Kuhn’s career, from early work on physical theory to his later evolutionary philosophy of science, with detailed explanations of key ideas and their development. PhilosophyMe – Thomas Kuhn – Summarizes Kuhn’s key arguments, such as paradigm shifts and incommensurability, and explains their broader impact beyond science. YouTube videos (running times): The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (11:37) Thomas Kuhn: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (14:30) Thomas S. Kuhn, The Crisis of the Old Quantum Theory (1:21:28) We look forward to seeing you.