The Structure of Scientific Revolutions | 
| Author: Thomas S. Kuhn
Publisher: University Of Chicago Press
List Price: $13.00
Buy Used: $3.82
You Save: $9.18 (71%)
New (72) Used (97) from $3.82
Rating:  118 reviews
Sales Rank: 3363
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1
Pages: 226
Number Of Discs: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.2 x 0.6
ISBN: 0226458083
Dewey Decimal Number: 501
EAN: 9780226458083
ASIN: 0226458083
Publication Date: December 15, 1996
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
| |
| Similar Items:
|
| Editorial Reviews:
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
Thomas S. Kuhn's classic book is now available with a new index.
"A landmark in intellectual history which has attracted attention far
beyond its own immediate field. . . . It is written with a combination
of depth and clarity that make it an almost unbroken series of
aphorisms. . . . Kuhn does not permit truth to be a criterion of
scientific theories, he would presumably not claim his own theory to be
true. But if causing a revolution is the hallmark of a superior
paradigm, [this book] has been a resounding success." —Nicholas Wade,
Science
"Perhaps the best explanation of [the] process of discovery." —William
Erwin Thompson, New York Times Book Review
"Occasionally there emerges a book which has an influence far beyond its
originally intended audience. . . . Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of
Scientific Revolutions . . . has clearly emerged as just such a
work." —Ron Johnston, Times Higher Education Supplement
"Among the most influential academic books in this century." —
Choice
—One of "The Hundred Most Influential Books Since the Second World
War," Times Literary Supplement
Thomas S. Kuhn was the Laurence Rockefeller Professor Emeritus of
linguistics and philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
His books include The Essential Tension; Black-Body Theory and the
Quantum Discontinuity, 1894-1912; and The Copernican
Revolution.
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 113 more reviews...
 The two Kuhns August 13, 2001
Suetonius (England)
189 out of 210 found this review helpful
Thomas Kuhn performed a signal service for historiography of science by studying how new ideas and new ways of thinking displace the old. He invented the term 'paradigm shift' to describe what happens when 'normal science' runs into 'anomalies' and enters a 'crisis', which in turn leads to a 'scientific revolution'. Nobody had heard of such things before, so Kuhn had a scoop. He sketched some historical examples in iconoclastic style; the result is this short book, first published forty years ago and still wowing Cultural Studies students today.
Much of what Kuhn the historian of science says here is sensible and well taken. It has certainly been influential, perhaps in ways the author never intended, and should be read for that reason. But there are odd omissions. The greatest paradigm shift in physics since Newton - the adoption of fully-fledged quantum mechanics after 1925 - finds no significant place in this study. Eminent physicists, including Einstein, and even Schrodinger, one of its founders, regarded the new paradigm with deep distaste on aesthetic and philosophical grounds. Yet the methodology was adopted universally almost at once. What sociological factors, what structures of power and patronage brought this about? We are not told.
It is when Kuhn puts on his philosopher-of-science hat and tells us about the 'incommensurability of paradigms' that we should question what he means, and more especially what some people have read into it. The idea is that Archimedes or Aristotle, encapsulated in their ancient world-view, would have been unable to see what Newton was getting at in his 'Principia'; and likewise Newton if you gave him a copy of Dirac's 'Quantum Mechanics'. This has been held to have implications for epistemology, viz: it is a mistake to think of the evolution of science (or any rational endeavor) as 'progress' in the sense of bringing us closer to an accurate picture of the world. Kuhn's position can be likened to Darwinian evolution: progress *from*, yes; progress *towards*, no. There is room here for fancy footwork. But the finer points are lost on some who simply cheer it as a poke in the eye for rationality.
If an epochal break can be found anywhere in the history of science, it is in the transition from the Aristotelian to the modern world-view which took place in early modern times. Since then nothing remotely like it has happened. The training of physicists still begins with a detailed study of Newtonian mechanics, which for many purposes, from shooting pool to spaceflight, provides an entirely adequate description. An important part of learning relativity or quantum mechanics lies in understanding how they fit in with Newtonian physics - in fact, precisely how the paradigms are commensurable where their domains overlap. The same people at different times use the paradigm of Newton and the paradigms of Einstein and Bohr/Heisenberg. They don't use the paradigm of Aristotle or the New Age paradigm because - interesting though these are to the historian or the social scientist - they don't work; they are not fruitful for puzzle-solving, Kuhn would say.
A process of generalization of paradigms has been characteristic of physics for the past few centuries, and this seems true of mature sciences generally. At the fundamental level a paradigm that has proven really useful is hardly ever scrapped (Kuhn cites two cases from physics since Newton: the recurring controversy over the nature of light - both sides seem to have won that one - and the caloric theory of heat). Instead, the old paradigm is subsumed into a more developed theory with a broader domain of application, yielding in some sense deeper insights. Kuhn the physicist knew this, of course, though some of his readers don't; so he had to defend the unusual position that e.g. Newtonian mechanics is fundamentally incompatible with Einsteinian mechanics, even though one is a limiting case of the other (Kuhn disputed this) and both are used successfully all the time. This was the only way he could maintain that they are 'incommensurable'.
Where does this leave the incommensurability of paradigms? The concept can be interpreted according to taste along a spectrum: at one end, true but trivial; at the other end, deep but almost certainly false. Indeed - and I'm going to be shockingly naive here - you wouldn't be reading this otherwise; you'd be chipping flints. For what it's worth, my opinion is that Newton, far from 'living in a different world', would be perfectly at home with modern physics and raring to go, given a couple of years to get up to speed; Archimedes might take a little longer, while Aristotle would be a leading light at the Sorbonne.
More problematic even than incommensurability of paradigms in Kuhn's work are occasional gnomic statements such as the following:
"There is, I think, no theory-independent way to reconstruct phrases like 'really there'; the notion of a match between the ontology of a theory and its 'real' counterpart in nature now seems to me illusive in principle"
and
"Scientific knowledge, *like language*, is intrinsically the common property of a group *or else nothing at all*" (my italics).
Taken with the thesis of the book (though Kuhn denied it) remarks like these open the door to all the baggage of so-called radical relativism. Now the baggage is in the hall and halfway up the stairs, as Gross & Levitt, Sokal & Bricmont and others have pointed out. Some of us wish it was out back in the hen-house.
At the heart of modern physics there is indeed an incommensurability, in at least one of Kuhn's senses. It is between the two fundamental theories, general relativity and quantum mechanics. That doesn't stop people from using both paradigms, but it's a great puzzle: no one knows how to fit them together correctly. When we find out (strictly speaking I should say 'if'), it will be as a result of a paradigm that hasn't shifted since the seventeenth century: theoretical structure expressed in the language of mathematics, built on and feeding back into an empirical base. And there will be real, at present unimagined consequences.
You may say that's naive or begs the ontological question. But I say it's the best we've got. No amount of self-regarding talk about hermeneutics and postmodern science - though it comes with a reference list as long as your arm to all the stars of critical 'theory' - will advance our understanding one iota. Whatever the world is, it isn't like that, and Kuhn never really imagined it was.
In spite of the impression I may have given, the book is worth reading and it isn't difficult (some background knowledge of actual science would help). Read it for yourself; don't believe everything people say about it.
Note added: Some readers think that Kuhn was describing a process of successive approximation to truth, incorporating a smart new account of convergence. The point cannot be made too strongly that he was doing nothing of the sort. I recommend reading page 206 from which the remarks about 'really there' were quoted. You don't have to be a relativist and anti-realist to be a Kuhnian, but it helps.
the good book that spawned a lot of mediocre thinking October 2, 2001
Robert J. Crawford (Balmette Talloires, France)
73 out of 100 found this review helpful
This is another of those books that are more talked about than read. It was conceived as a modest work of sociology on certain types of tranistion in science - those in the physical or yhardy sciences - and yet Kuhnys conclusions have been taken as a metaphor by everyone from literary theorists to New Age devotees into heavy-duty moral and social relativism. It is a great example how ideas can escape the control of their originators.Kuhnys book is OK, but it is a rather pedestrian read. He wanted to look at how scientists behaved in the face of new ideas and observations that better described the underlying reality - the truth, if you will - of their fields. It was intended to be strictly limited to the more provable sciences, which could be tested against predictions. As far as his intentions went, it is a modest success. If you want to get into the New-Agey philosophical ramifications, you need to go to less rigorous thinkers such as Foucault and his many copiers or Fritof Kapra. You will not find them in Kuhnys book, which I suspect would surprise many people who talk about him. In fact, the scientists I know donyt think much of Kuhnys book: they see it as contributing to the post-moedernist argument that science is simply and exclusively a social contruct; they argue that they are going after far deeper truths - true descriptions of reality be they mathematical or the historical categorisations of the darwininists. They despise the talk of paradigm shifting, which they believe is built into the scientific pursuit already. I suppose that they are right, though I also believe there is no question that Kuhn succeeded in capturing how they think and act in many circumstances, that is, the old school often needs to die off so that new ideas can gain the status of orthodoxy that in turn will fall one day. I would not recommend this book to the casual reader. It is better for academics - the yknowledge professionalsy - or for serious intellectuals who will not be disappointed in (and indeed accept) its strict limits in scope.
 The Myth of Linear Progression November 2, 2001
James D. DeWitt (Fairbanks, AK United States)
44 out of 50 found this review helpful
I'm not sure if it is still the case, but there was a time when Kuhn's book was _the_ most frequently cited book in scientific literature. With all respect to my fellow reviewers, it might be a tad bit arrogant to dismiss such a book as "puerile."Before Kuhn, we were taught in school that scientific progress was linear, that it was an unending progression of refinements and developments, with one "truth" leading to the next "truth." Kuhn's insights including pointing out that such a linear progression was mostly a lie. His thesis was that the major developments in science were mostly revolutionary. That some "truths" turned out to be false. Astronomy was revolutionized by Galielo and Copernicus, and man was divested from the center of the universe. Physics was revolutionized by Newton. Biology and Darwin. It didn't hurt that plate tectonics came along shortly after Kuhn published, and Kuhn looked like his model was predictive, too. Part of Kuhn's impact, I have to admit, was a result of the time which the book was first published. In the middle and late 1960's, questioning authority was the heart of any undergraduate's thinking, and Kuhn's ideas were read by some as a license to question all authority. Perhaps as a consequence, Kuhn's model has been carried by other writers beyond all reason, with everyone from sociologists to New Age fuzzies usurping his terminology, making "paradigm shift" a nearly instant cliche. But his influence has gone far beyond those who want to mis-apply his ideas to everything from post-modern dance to sociobiology. Uniformitarianism has been bloodied, perhaps permanently. By geologists, evolutionists, archaeologists and more; the influence has been pervasive and real. Stephen Jay Gould may or may not subscribe to "Structure," but he has sure demolished uniformitarianism in evolution. I disagree with those who regard "Structure" as "the most important" anything. But it unquestionably has been stunningly influential, and any serious student of science or philosphy, I believe, will be reading this book a hundred years from now. And apart from its influence and impact, the book still reads well almost 40 years on. It's fun and, if you enjoy seeing the world stood on its ear, you'll like Kuhn's approach.
Highly Recommended for a Reason February 18, 2001
F. Lybrand (Chapel Hill, NC US)
33 out of 38 found this review helpful
This book frequently pops up on a "Top 100" or "Best Science Book" or some other list for a reason: Mr. Kuhn was the first person to step back and look at the complex way in which science and scientific study have advanced over the course of humanity and try to put those observations forth in a logical manner. He succeeded brilliantly. Mr. Kuhn's main point is that there are two phases of scientific discovery, "normal science" which is built on established principals, rounding out gaps in existing theories until the theories begin to unravel, at which point we have entered a period which will require a "paradigm shift". Mr. Kuhn takes the reader through multiple historical examples, the shifts in scientific thought brought about by Copernicus, Newton, Lavoisier and Einstein. His references are relevant and his thoughts are clearly put forth. The historical anecdotes are very entertaining and educational and do a solid job of reinforcing his point. I must admit I was a bit concerned during the first chapter, it was a bit tough to make it through, but did a very good job of laying the groundwork and allowing a glimpse of the author's thought process. The second chapter, in which the author begins to define "normal science", immediately put me to rest as the author dove straight into making his point and proving his argument. The final three chapters pertaining to the Invisibility, Resolution and Progress of revolutions should be required reading for anyone who works in the sciences, and is immensely valuable to anyone working in any field. I have been surprised that there haven't been more straight on business interpretations of Kuhn's work (although there has obviously been much unreferenced piracy), as the spread of scientific thought is a very apt metaphor for the spread of business theory and product adoption. This is a very good book and I highly recommend it, regardless of what field you work in, be it science, business or otherwise.
A true classic August 25, 2000
Alex De Visscher (Calgary, AB, Canada)
26 out of 31 found this review helpful
This is the book in which Thomas Kuhn introduced his famous paradigm theory: scientists of the same discipline have a set of theories and practices in common, the so-called paradigm. In the normal course of scientific research, they do not question this paradigm, but apply it to solve new problems. This changes when the paradigm is found to fail consistently when it is applied to explain certain observations. This can lead to the appearance of a new paradigm, which eventually replaces the old one.The book is very well-documented. Kuhn amply uses examples from the history of science to illustrate his point, and you will not find a single statement that is not accompanied by the necessary arguments. Books like this are not easy to read, but this book is worth the effort. First of all, because Kuhn has an eloquent style. Second, because you do not need any prior knowledge in order to understand the text (although it might help). Third, and most importantly, because it gives a good picture of how science develops, how scientists behave. Of course no single picture of science can ever be perfect. Every philosophy of science highlights certain aspects of the scientific process, and leaves other aspects almost untouched. This book is no exception. However, if you read just one original work in this field, this is probably the best choice.
|
|
|
