5 Lessons from Kuhn

On Scientific Revolutions

Thomas S. Kuhn (1922 to 1996), who finished his academic career at MIT, wrote one of the great works of the twentieth century entitled The Structure of Scientific Revolutions published in 1962. This major work made the word "paradigm" and the phrase "paradigm shift" part of our common language. He sought to explain as both an historian of science and as a philosopher of science how scientific communities advance their research agendas under a shared paradigm or exemplar until the discovery of anomalies lead to a crisis which is eventually resolved when a new paradigm arises. Newton and Einstein immediately come to mind from the field of physics. But there have been many other, less famous paradigm shifts in fields like chemistry, optics, and electricity. There can even be paradigm shifts in specialties that are little known to the average, educated person. The process described by Kuhn is a mixture of science, technology, sociology, and luck. Kuhn gives us a fascinating perspective on the world of science through time, and his perspective has influenced those in the social sciences and in the humanities as they consider the history and future of their own fields of inquiry. What may be the most fascinating is to see how individual scientists made the leap to a new paradigm when the old one could no longer provide needed explanations. This process is a riveting story about the human pursuit of greater and greater knowledge about the world.