Josiah Royce
American philosopher (1855-1916)
Thomas Kuhn
American historian, physicist and philosopher
Thomas Samuel Kuhnwas an American historian and philosopher of science whose 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.
Kuhn made several claims concerning the progress of scientific knowledge: that scientific fields undergo periodic “paradigm shifts” rather than solely progressing in a linear and continuous way, and that these paradigm shifts open up new approaches to understanding what scientists would never have considered valid before; and that the notion of scientific truth, at any given moment, cannot be established solely by objective criteria but is defined by a consensus of a scientific community.
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About the Thomas Kuhn
Thomas Samuel Kuhnwas an American historian and philosopher of science whose 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.
Kuhn made several claims concerning the progress of scientific knowledge: that scientific fields undergo periodic “paradigm shifts” rather than solely progressing in a linear and continuous way, and that these paradigm shifts open up new approaches to understanding what scientists would never have considered valid before; and that the notion of scientific truth, at any given moment, cannot be established solely by objective criteria but is defined by a consensus of a scientific community. Competing paradigms are frequently incommensurable; that is, they are competing and irreconcilable accounts of reality. Thus, our comprehension of science can never rely wholly upon “objectivity” alone. Science must account for subjective perspectives as well, since all objective conclusions are ultimately founded upon the subjective conditioning/worldview of its researchers and participants.
7 Quotes by Thomas Kuhn
- 1.
Normal science does not aim at novelties of fact or theory and, when successful, finds none.
Thomas KuhnAmerican historian, physicist and philosopher
- 2.
Crisis alone is not enough. There must also be a basis, though it need be neither rational nor ultimately correct, for faith in the particular candidate chosen.
Thomas KuhnAmerican historian, physicist and philosopher
- 3.
The crises of our time, it becomes increasingly clear, are the necessary impetus for the revolution now under way. And once we understand nature’s transformative powers, we see that it is our powerful ally, not a force to feared our subdued.
Thomas KuhnAmerican historian, physicist and philosopher
- 4.
Rather than being an interpreter, the scientist who embraces a new paradigm is like the man wearing inverting lenses.
Thomas KuhnAmerican historian, physicist and philosopher
- 5.
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.
Thomas KuhnAmerican historian, physicist and philosopher
- 6.
The historian of science may be tempted to exclaim that when paradigms change, the world itself changes with them.
Thomas KuhnAmerican historian, physicist and philosopher
- 7.
It is, I think, particularly in periods of acknowledged crisis that scientists have turned to philosophical analysis as a device for unlocking the riddles of their field. Scientists have not generally needed or wanted to be philosophers.
Thomas KuhnAmerican historian, physicist and philosopher