Thomas Kuhn
Philosopher and historian of science (1922 to 1996) whose The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) argued that science moves through paradigms and revolutions, and made "paradigm shift" a household phrase.
Thomas Kuhn did not write this page.
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Their wordsThat is not a relativist's position, and it displays the sense in which I am a convinced believer in scientific progress.
↗The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (second edition, enlarged, University of Chicago Press, 1970)archive.org All 17 from this book
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Our reading
A paradigm is what a scientific community shares, and the community is those who share it
Their wordsA paradigm is what the members of a scientific community share, and, conversely, a scientific community consists of men who share a paradigm.
↗The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (second edition, enlarged, University of Chicago Press, 1970)archive.org All 17 from this book
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Our reading
Old scientists' lifelong resistance to a new paradigm is not a breach of scientific standards
Their wordsLifelong resistance, particularly from those whose productive careers have committed them to an older tradition of normal science, is not a violation of scientific standards but an index to the nature of scientific research itself.
↗The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (second edition, enlarged, University of Chicago Press, 1970)archive.org All 17 from this book
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Our reading
We may have to give up the idea that paradigm changes bring science ever closer to the truth
Their wordsWe may, to be more precise, have to relinquish the notion, explicit or implicit, that changes of paradigm carry scientists and those who learn from them closer and closer to the truth.
↗The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (second edition, enlarged, University of Chicago Press, 1970)archive.org All 17 from this book
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Their wordsAnomaly appears only against the background provided by the paradigm.
↗The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (second edition, enlarged, University of Chicago Press, 1970)archive.org All 17 from this book
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Our reading
Normal science does not aim to find new kinds of phenomena; what does not fit is often not seen
Their wordsNo 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.
↗The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (second edition, enlarged, University of Chicago Press, 1970)archive.org All 17 from this book
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Their wordsPhilosophers of science have repeatedly demonstrated that more than one theoretical construction can always be placed upon a given collection of data.
↗The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (second edition, enlarged, University of Chicago Press, 1970)archive.org All 17 from this book
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Their wordsHistory, 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.
↗The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (second edition, enlarged, University of Chicago Press, 1970)archive.org All 17 from this book
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Our reading
Rejecting one paradigm is always accepting another, judged against nature and against each other
Their wordsThe decision to reject one paradigm is always simultaneously the decision to accept another, and the judgment leading to that decision involves the comparison of both paradigms with nature and with each other.
↗The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (second edition, enlarged, University of Chicago Press, 1970)archive.org All 17 from this book
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Their wordsLike the choice between competing political institutions, that between competing paradigms proves to be a choice between incompatible modes of community life.
↗The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (second edition, enlarged, University of Chicago Press, 1970)archive.org All 17 from this book
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Our reading
Normal science often suppresses fundamental novelties because they subvert its commitments
Their wordsNormal science, for example, often suppresses fundamental novelties because they are necessarily subversive of its basic commitments.
↗The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (second edition, enlarged, University of Chicago Press, 1970)archive.org All 17 from this book
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Our reading
A paradigm wins status by solving a few problems scientists see as acute better than rivals do
Their wordsParadigms gain their status because they are more successful than their competitors in solving a few problems that the group of practitioners has come to recognize as acute.
↗The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (second edition, enlarged, University of Chicago Press, 1970)archive.org All 17 from this book
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Their wordsNormal science does not aim at novelties of fact or theory and, when successful, finds none.
↗The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (second edition, enlarged, University of Chicago Press, 1970)archive.org All 17 from this book
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Their wordsObservation and experience can and must drastically restrict the range of admissible scientific belief, else there would be no science.
↗The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (second edition, enlarged, University of Chicago Press, 1970)archive.org All 17 from this book
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Their wordsAlmost always the men who achieve these fundamental inventions of a new paradigm have been either very young or very new to the field whose paradigm they change.
↗The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (second edition, enlarged, University of Chicago Press, 1970)archive.org All 17 from this book
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Their wordsCompetition between segments of the scientific community is the only historical process that ever actually results in the rejection of one previously accepted theory or in the adoption of another.
↗The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (second edition, enlarged, University of Chicago Press, 1970)archive.org All 17 from this book
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Our reading
What you see depends on what you look at and on what your experience has taught you to see
Their wordsWhat a man sees depends both upon what he looks at and also upon what his previous visual-conceptual experience has taught him to see.
↗The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (second edition, enlarged, University of Chicago Press, 1970)archive.org All 17 from this book