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| The Structure of Scientific Revolutions | 
 enlarge | Author: Thomas S. Kuhn
Publisher: University Of Chicago Press
Discount Category: Book
Selling Price: $13.00
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Customer Ratings:  119 comments
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 226
Shipping Weight (pounds): 0.5
Dimensions (inch): 7.9 x 5.2 x 0.6
ISBN: 0226458083
Dewey Decimal Number: 501
EAN: 9780226458083
Publication Date: December 15, 1996
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: some writing and underlining Used - Good
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Amazon.com Review
There's a "Frank & Ernest" comic strip showing a chick breaking out of its shell, looking around, and saying, "Oh, wow! Paradigm shift!" Blame the late Thomas Kuhn. Few indeed are the philosophers or historians influential enough to make it into the funny papers, but Kuhn is one. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is indeed a paradigmatic work in the history of science. Kuhn's use of terms such as "paradigm shift" and "normal science," his ideas of how scientists move from disdain through doubt to acceptance of a new theory, his stress on social and psychological factors in science--all have had profound effects on historians, scientists, philosophers, critics, writers, business gurus, and even the cartoonist in the street. Some scientists (such as Steven Weinberg and Ernst Mayr) are profoundly irritated by Kuhn, especially by the doubts he casts--or the way his work has been used to cast doubt--on the idea of scientific progress. Yet it has been said that the acceptance of plate tectonics in the 1960s, for instance, was sped by geologists' reluctance to be on the downside of a paradigm shift. Even Weinberg has said that "Structure has had a wider influence than any other book on the history of science." As one of Kuhn's obituaries noted, "We all live in a post-Kuhnian age." --Mary Ellen Curtin
Product Description
Now available with a new Index, Kuhn's classic book offers "a landmark intelleectual history which has attracted attention far beyond its own immediate field (Nicholas Wade, Science). "Perhaps the best explanation of (the) process of discovery."--William Erwin Thompson, New York Times Book Review.
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| Customer Comments: Read 114 more comments...
 Kuhn's work remains a must read for honest seekers of solutions to science's puzzles November 20, 2008
1 out of 1 found this comment useful.
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas S. Kuhn, originally published in 1962, is more relevant today than ever before. Anyone with an open mind, craving the most plausible answers to many scientific puzzles, will greatly enhance their understanding of how science actually works if they read this ground-breaking work.
I first read the book in 1972 as part of a Philosophy course that explored human thought over the centuries relative to concepts such as "Space, Time, Cause and Motion."
Kuhn, more than any other author in that series, truly opened my mind to understand the historical process whereby "science" takes place.
His most compelling analysis reveals plainly that scientific thought evolves not as an accumulation of mere facts over time, but rather is a function of how well proposed theories in a given time explain observable phenomena.
As long as a the established scientific model, or "paradigm" better explains or "solves the puzzle" in connection with given a given phenomenon, the practitioners of "normal science" zealously continue to pursue increasingly more explanations for what may be going on in nature or the universe under the banner of that particular "school of thought."
However, inevitably, anomalies that do not fit or support the current paradigm begin to creep in...eventually adding up to such a degree that the veracity of the theory begins to be called into question by a few bold "out of the box" thinkers.
Nevertheless, the community of steadfast adherents to the existing paradigm will tend to vehemently oppose, mock or question the credentials of anyone proposing an alternative theory or explanation.
Here is where the scientific "revolution" begins to emerge. Practitioners of what Kuhn calls "revolutionary science" conclude the increasing failures of the established theory require a re-examination of various assumptions...ultimately leading to a rival theory which, when reaching the point where it better explains observable phenomena, than the established view, triggers a "paradigm shift."
The new theory increasingly gains supporters, until it eventually dislodges the previously accepted model.
So why is Kuhn's book a must read? In today's world of science there is neither a shortage of controversies nor of anatomies in term of many established theories within the scientific community.
1. A variable speed of light cosmology has been proposed independently by John Moffat and the two-man team of Andreas Albrecht and Joao Magueijo to explain the horizon anomaly of cosmology.
The idea is that light once traveled many times faster in the distant past, and thus distant regions of the expanding universe have had time to interact since the beginning of the universe, thereby proposing as an alternative to cosmic inflation.
2. Several anomalies continue to rear their heads in connection with The Theory of Evolution (absence of transitional life forms and many others) and, true to form, the established scientific community tends to defend and protect its position, typically scoffing at those who question their key assumptions.
Kuhn's masterful work, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, enables bold thinkers, who choose not to handicapped by the protectionism and often closed-minded tenants of today's "scientific establishment," to better recognize the transition we are in today...and to support the search for alternative models that indeed will usher in another round of paradigm shifts...and a new scientific revolution.
John A. Fallone
Scientific Revolutions September 24, 2008
1 out of 1 found this comment useful.
This book is widely used for doctoral programs in social sciences. Overall, it's a well-written book, but the author uses the term "paradigm" for several different concepts. If you can find a good summary of this book, just go for that one.
Review of Kuhn July 30, 2008
1 out of 1 found this comment useful.
I enjoy the reading. I have used Kuhn as a reference throughout grad school to justify my thoughts on leadership paradigm shifts. Kuhn's contribution had four positive elements: a) Mechanism of crisis: precipitation and resolution, b) Analogy of the historicity of science with evolution c) that science rewrites its own history, and d) psychology of paradigm shifts; that the paradigm is not completely defined by explicit prescription but also by a system of practices that are not fully articulated. In summary, Change is difficult. Human Beings resist change. However, the process has been set in motion long ago and we will continue to co-create our own experience. Kuhn (1996) states, "awareness is prerequisite to all acceptable changes of theory" (p. 67). It all begins in the mind of the person. What we perceive, whether normal or metanormal, conscious or unconscious, are subject to the limitations and distortions produced by our inherited and socially conditional nature.
Not Just for Those Interested in Science June 22, 2008
1 out of 1 found this comment useful.
Essential reading in understanding why the Enlightenment ideal of rationality is dead or at least doesn't count in ways that matter. In particular, Kuhn calls into question the idea of science as a rational enterprise, and since science is epistemologically privileged and thought to be the essence of rationality, to call into question the rationality of science is to call into question rationality itself. This is different, I submit, than the anti-rationality of the deconstructionists (e.g., Derrida), which seems to lack immediate real world consequences (aside form contributing to a sense of alienation in some). I find Hegel to be a precursor of Kuhn. Hegel attempted to describe how we come to believe what we believe, and Kuhn attempts to do this in the field of science, and, it should be added, with much more accessibly.
There are some who will find Kuhn lacking all coherence (sophisticated BS, as one person put it), and that is another way of saying "irrational". For those who associate irrationality with things like religious fundamentalism, irrationalism is a fearful thing. Yet, it is rationality itself that has been called into question by the events of the 20th century, beginning with the carnage of WWI. The answer is not more rationalism. Rationalism, the primacy of reason and the center of modernism, is itself a belief, and the crisis of modernity is the recognition that reason has no more claim to a privileged position than religion. The answer may be, as Rorty has pointed out, deciding what we want to believe without being forced to justify the basis of those beliefs: we believe because our beliefs support what we hold to be good things(neo-pragmatism) That may be a fearful thing for those who don't find complete correspondence between their beliefs and Rorty's privileged beliefs. What, though, it does show, is that irrationality is not sufficient grounds for being dismissive. In doing so one may be taking a stance on the wrong side of the arrow of history.
The arrow, though, is not that of the Whig theory of history, where things constantly improve driven by reason. Historians of this view (as well as much of popular culture) denigrate older views by degrading them to myth or religious belief status. This gives a privileged position to our own, contemporary beliefs and gives us a sense of comfort. Kuhn disturbs this comfortable view by showing, for example, that Ptolemaic astronomy gave plausible answers to questions of the day. So too, one could argue that the contemporary dismissive view of Scholastic philosophy is more the result of Enlightenment propaganda than of merit. At the least, Kuhn is a good (partial) antidote for contemporary smugness --- a challenge to bourgeois sentiment. Kuhn, though, is much more than a cultural caution; he is an important voice in the contemporary philosophical debate.
Who would like "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions"? Those who like ideas with profound consequences easily presented. Kuhn is a Nietzsche, and like Nietzsche is at the very least a fun read. He is much more if taken seriously.
 Important, but Over-rated June 20, 2008
1 out of 1 found this comment useful.
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is an important book, because it helped people view scientific progress in a new light, and introduced us to the important concept of paradigm shift. Unfortunately, however, the book is poorly written, with a dense and overly academic style, and quite frankly, is very, very, boring. Good concept, poor execution.
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