Thomas Kuhn
Philosopher, Academic
1922 – 1996
Who was Thomas Kuhn?
Thomas Samuel Kuhn was an American physicist, historian, and philosopher of science whose controversial 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions was deeply influential in both academic and popular circles, introducing the term "paradigm shift", which has since become an English-language staple.
Kuhn made several notable claims concerning the progress of scientific knowledge: that scientific fields undergo periodic "paradigm shifts" rather than solely progressing in a linear and continuous way; 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 accounts of reality which cannot be coherently reconciled. Thus, our comprehension of science can never rely on full "objectivity"; we must account for subjective perspectives as well, all objective conclusions being ultimately founded upon subjective conditioning/worldview.
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- Born
- Jul 18, 1922
Cincinnati - Also known as
- Thomas S. Kuhn
- Thomas Samuel Kuhn
- Nationality
- United States of America
- Profession
- Education
- PhD, Harvard University
Physics
( - 1949)
- PhD, Harvard University
- Employment
- University of California, Berkeley
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Princeton University
- Lived in
- Cincinnati
- Cambridge
( - 1996/06/17)
- Died
- Jun 17, 1996
Cambridge
Submitted
on July 23, 2013
Citation
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"Thomas Kuhn." Biographies.net. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 19 Apr. 2024. <https://www.biographies.net/people/en/thomas_samuel_kuhn>.
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