Thomas Kuhn
Thomas Kuhn
Thomas Samuel Kuhnwas an American physicist, historian, and philosopher of science whose controversial 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...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth18 July 1922
CountryUnited States of America
Thomas Kuhn quotes about
successful facts novelty
Normal science does not aim at novelties of fact or theory and, when successful, finds none.
men fields youth
Almost 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.
light community important
The historian of science may be tempted to claim that when paradigms change, the world itself changes with them. Led by a new paradigm, scientists adopt new instruments and look in new places. even more important, during revolutions, scientists see new and different things when looking with familiar instruments in places they have looked before. It is rather as if the professional community had been suddenly transported to another planet where familiar objects are seen in a different light and are joined by unfamiliar ones as well.
men lenses scientist
Rather than being an interpreter, the scientist who embraces a new paradigm is like the man wearing inverting lenses.
commitment successful community
Normal science, the activity in which most scientists inevitably spend most all their time, is predicated on the assumption that the scientific community knows what the world is like. Normal science, often suppresses fundamental novelties because they are necessarily subversive of its basic commitments. As a puzzle-solving activity, normal science does not aim at novelties of fact or theory and, when successful, finds none.
data philosopher construction
Philosophers of science have repeatedly demonstrated that more than one theoretical construction can always be placed upon a given collection of data.
expectations resistance novelty
In science novelty emerges only with difficulty, manifested by resistance, against a background provided by expectation.
world theory term
We see the world in terms of our theories.
men discovery design
The man who is striving to solve a problem defined by existing knowledge and technique is not, however, just looking around. He knows what he wants to achieve, and he designs his instruments and directs his thoughts accordingly. Unanticipated novelty, the new discovery, can emerge only to the extent that his anticipations about nature and his instruments prove wrong... There is no other effective way in which discoveries might be generated.
men break-through practice
Individuals who break through by inventing a new paradigm are almost always either very young men or very new to the field whose paradigm they change. These are the men who, being little committed by prior practice to the traditional rules of normal science, are particularly likely to see that those rules no longer define a playable game and conceive another set that can replace them.
objectivity prejudice scientist
Far from being magisterial in its objectivity, science was conditioned by history, society, and the prejudices of scientists.
thinking way significant
All significant breakthroughs are break -“withs” old ways of thinking.
answers solutions asks
The answers you get depend upon the questions you ask.
men taught looks
What a man sees depends both upon what he looks at and also upon what his previous visual-conceptual experience has taught him to see.