What Thomas Kuhn thinks about metascience
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.
We collected these quotes from things they published elsewhere, and every quote links to where it was said. They have no account here and have not endorsed this site. Quotes are word for word; the short line under each one is our own restatement, not their wording. Their own site. Is this you? Claim it or ask us to remove it. Or tell us what is wrong here.
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7 dated positions, c. 1962 to c. 1969, in their own words. Our reading of what Thomas Kuhn has said — not written or endorsed by them.
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Our readingA 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 readingOld 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 readingWe 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 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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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 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