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Birth of Thomas Samuel Kuhn
Thomas Samuel Kuhn was born to Samuel L. Kuhn and Minette Strook Kuhn on July 18, 1922 in Cincinnati, Ohio. Thomas Kuhn would eventually become known as the most influential philosophers of science of modern time. -
Kuhn Graduates from Harvard
In the fall of 1940 Kuhn moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts to begin his undergraduate studies at Harvard. He graduated with a BS in Physics (summa cum laude) in 1943. -
PhD from Harvard
During World War II, after graduation, Kuhn joined the Radio Research Laboratory, a secret research laboratory at Harvard. He was sent to work in the UK where he would eventually come to study radar installations in Germany. During this time, he began to lose interest in Physics. However, when he returned to Harvard in 1946 he pursued a master's degree in Physics and soon after, in 1949, received his doctorate. -
The Copernican Revolution
In 1957 Kuhn published his first book "The Copernican Revolution" in which he criticized Nicolaus Copernicus’s book "De revolutionibus".
In it he wrote about the Nicolaus Copernicus' Heliocentric Model which showed the Sun at the center of the solar system. The Heliocentric Model was a paradigm shift from the Ptolemaic which showed Earth at the center of the universe. -
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
Thomas Kuhn began writing "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" in 1958 while he was an associate professor at the University of California at Berkeley. It was finally published in 1962. In it he wrote that scientific progress is not at gradual process and that a breakthrough is what causes a revolution and paradigm shift. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions was one of Kuhn's most influential books. -
The Paradigm Shift
The concept of paradigm shift was first introduced in Thomas Kuhn's book "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions". A paradigm shift is a time when the usual and accepted way of doing or thinking about something changes completely ("Cambridge Dictionary"). After Kuhn's introduction of the concept of paradigm shifts, the term became widely used. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YL7PA51Qs8A -
Contribution to Philosophy of Science
Thomas Kuhn's contribution to Philosophy of Science has been enormous. Before his book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, was published it was usually accepted that science took on a gradual process. However, once the book had been published, people in the science community were introduced to the idea that ground breaking discoveries are what cause revolutions. This caused a new way of thinking within the scientific community. -
Citation:
“Paradigm Shift.” Cambridge Dictionary, Cambridge Dictionary. INTELECOM. “Thomas Kuhn: His Core Ideas.” YouTube, YouTube, 17 Apr. 2018 www.youtube.com/watch?v=YL7PA51Qs8A. Bird, Alexander. “Thomas Kuhn.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Stanford University, 31 Oct. 2018, plato.stanford.edu/entries/thomas-kuhn/.
