Thomas Kuhn Quotes

Thomas Kuhn — American Writer born on July 18, 1922, died on June 17, 1996

Thomas Samuel Kuhn was 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... (wikipedia)

It is, I think, particularly in periods of acknowledged crisis that scientists have turned to philosophical analysis as a device for unlocking the riddles of their field. Scientists have not generally needed or wanted to be philosophers.

The historian of science may be tempted to exclaim that when paradigms change, the world itself changes with them.

Normal science does not aim at novelties of fact or theory and, when successful, finds none.

Rather than being an interpreter, the scientist who embraces a new paradigm is like the man wearing inverting lenses.

The crises of our time, it becomes increasingly clear, are the necessary impetus for the revolution now under way. And once we understand nature's transformative powers, we see that it is our powerful ally, not a force to feared our subdued.

Thomas Kuhn Quotes

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