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Birth
Thomas Kuhn was born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1922. His parents were Samuel and Minette Kuhn. His father was an industrial engineer, graduated from Harvard and MIT, and fought in World War I. -
Education
In 1946, Kuhn completed his Master's degree in physics from Harvard University. Then, in 1949, he completed his PhD in History of Science from Harvard. His senior thesis was on the Cohesive Energy of Monovalent Metals as a Function of the Atomic Quantum Defects. In submitting this thesis, Kuhn was elected to the Society of Fellows at Harvard. -
The Copernican Revolution
From 1951-1956, Kuhn taught undergraduate courses in history and philosophy of science at Harvard. His classes were focused on historical case studies, which allowed him to study Aristotle's work in closer detail. This led him to switch his concentration to history of science, and in 1957, he published his first book "The Copernican Revolution." This book focused on the shift to the Heliocentric model of the solar system during the Renaissance. -
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
From 1956-1964, Kuhn taught at the University of California at Berkeley as an assistant professor, and in 1961 was promoted to Professor of History of Science.
In 1962, he published "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions," which suggests that science is influenced by factors such as social class, politics, gender and racial bias, and until there is a paradigm shift, scientists will discover what they want to see. -
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Continued
He goes on to detail four phases of a paradigm shift; pre-science, normal science, model crisis and scientific revolution or paradigm shift. The Encyclopedia Britannica defines a paradigm as "conceptual world-views, that consist of formal theories, classic experiments, and trusted methods." This video further defines Kuhn's Paradigm Shift. https://youtu.be/oI7qocMDsXM -
Kuhn's Later Work
From 1964-1979, Kuhn taught at Princeton University. His later works were a collection of essays, "the Essential Tension" (1977), and "Black body theory and the Quantum Discontinuity" (1978).
Then, from 1979-1991, Kuhn taught at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he worked on topics ranging from the history and philosophy of science, and the development of the concept of incommensurability. -
Death
Kuhn died at the age of 73 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He battled brachial tube and throat cancer for two years. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy states that before he died, he was working on a second monograph on the evolutionary conception of scientific change and concept acquisition in developmental psychology.
