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Thomas Kuhn Biography

Thomas Samuel Kuhn (/kuːn/; July 18, 1922 – June 17, 1996) was an American physicist, historian and philosopher of science whose controversial 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions was influential in both academic and popular circles, introducing the term paradigm shift, which has since become an English-language idiom.

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Thomas Kuhn Quotes

Philosophers of science have repeatedly demonstrated that more than one theoretical construction can always be placed upon a given collection of data.

Construction, Data, Philosopher, Philosophers, Theoretical

The transition between competing paradigms cannot be made a step at a time, forced by logic and neutral experience. Like the gestalt switch, it must occur all at once (though not necessarily in an instant) or not at all.

Gestalt, Instant, Logic, Steps, Transition

Groups do not have experiences except insofar as all their members do. And there are no experiences. . . that all the members of a scientific community must share in the course of a [scientific] revolution. Revolutions should be described not in terms of group experience but in terms of the varied experiences of individual group members. Indeed, that variety itself turns out to play an essential role in the evolution of scientific knowledge.

Described, Knowledge, Play, Science, Varied, Variety

Normal science does not aim at novelties of fact or theory and, when successful, finds none.

Doe, Fact, Facts, Successful, Theory

Communication across the revolutionary divide is inevitably partial.

Across, Communication, Language, Partial, Revolutionary

As in political revolutions, so in paradigm choice--there is no standard higher than the assent of the relevant community. To discover how scientific revolutions are effected, we shall therefore have to examine not only the impact of nature and of logic, but also the techniques of persuasive argumentation effective within the quite special groups that constitute the community of scientists.

Impact, Paradigm, Political, Political Revolution, Science, Scientific

The answers you get depend upon the questions you ask.

Answers, Ask, Asking, Entrepreneur, Questions

History, if viewed as a repository for more than anecdote or chronology, could produce a decisive transformation in the image of science by which we are now possessed.

Anecdotes, History, Possessed, Produce, Science

Normal science, the activity in which most scientists inevitably spend most all their time, is predicated on the assumption that the scientific community knows what the world is like. Normal science often suppresses fundamental novelties because they are necessarily subversive of its basic commitments.

Commitment, Community, Like, Novelties, Successful, Wisdom

Rather than being an interpreter, the scientist who embraces a new paradigm is like the man wearing inverting lenses.

Embraces, Lenses, Men, Scientist

No part of the aim of normal science is to call forth new sorts of phenomena; indeed those that will not fit the box are often not seen at all. Nor do scientists normally aim to invent new theories, and they are often intolerant of those invented by others.

Box, Fit, Normal, Normally, Scientist

Literally as well as metaphorically, the man accustomed to inverting lenses has undergone a revolutionary transformation of vision.

Inverting, Lenses, Literally, Men, Vision

Every important idea in science sounds strange at first.

Idea, Ideas, Important, Science, Sound, Strange

In science novelty emerges only with difficulty, manifested by resistance, against a background provided by expectation.

Difficulty, Emerges, Expectations, Novelty, Resistance

We see the world in terms of our theories.

See, Term, Terms, Theory, World

What a man sees depends both upon what he looks at and also upon what his previous visual-conceptual experience has taught him to see.

Depends, Looks, Men, See, Taught

As in political revolutions, so in paradigm choice-there is no standard higher than the assent of the relevant community. . . this issue of paradigm choice can never be unequivocally settled by logic and experiment alone.

Assent, Choice, Community, Issues, Political Revolution, Science

Under normal conditions the research scientist is not an innovator but a solver of puzzles, and the puzzles upon which he concentrates are just those which he believes can be both stated and solved within the existing scientific tradition.

Believe, Concentrates, Existing, Normal, Research, Scientist

Its assimilation requires the reconstruction of prior theory and re-evaluation of prior fact, an intrinsically revolutionary process that is seldom completed a single man and never overnight

Assimilation, Evaluation, Facts, Man, Men, Process

The historian of science may be tempted to exclaim that when paradigms change, the world itself changes with them.

Historian, May, Science, World

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