Thomas Kuhn
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

Outline of this Guide

1. Overview Information
2. Focus Sections
3. Scientific Progress
4. Paradigm Shifts / Scientific Revolutions
5. Social Study of Knowledge
6. Bibliography
7. Related Web Links

Overview

• Thomas Samuel Kuhn [Britannica Entry] (1922-1996) American historian of science.
• Most noted for concepts of paradigm shifts and scientific revolutions.
• His work was a formative influence on the emerging field of the Social Study of Knowledge.
• Kuhn's work became prominent to some degree because people sought to apply his paradigm concepts (inappropriately) to fields outside natural sciences.

Focus Sections

• Chapter I. Introduction: A Role for History (pp. 1-9)
• Chapter I. The Route to Normal Science (pp. 10-22)
• Chapter VI. Anomaly and the Emergence of Scientific Discoveries (pp. 52-65)
• Chapter X. Revolutions as Changes of World View (pp. 111-135)

Scientific Progress

• Kuhn's project in Structure was to advance a new sociologically based conception of the history of scientific endeavor. Kuhn maintained that the (then) standard way of studying the history of science was based on the idea that science progresses by cumulative advances made by individual scientists. The traditional approach was fundamentally chronological, portraying scientific knowledge as an accretion of discoveries, and oriented toward a detailed study of these incremental advances and their discoverers and how they relate to current advances.
• Kuhn challenged the traditional approach, claiming that it led to artificial and retroactively constructed accounts of science projected backwards from current endeavors. Rather than a steady and uninterrupted process of advancement, Kuhn characterized science as advancing in a sharply punctuated fashion. The long periods of relative calm which science experiences are punctuated by turbulent upheavals or revolutions of the prevailing notions of the community of practitioners. The central concepts of these Kuhnian scientific revolutions were the paradigm and the notion of how paradigms shift.

Paradigm Shifts / Scientific Revolutions

• Generally speaking, scientific paradigms are models, universally recognized by the scientific community for a substantial period of time, of some major aspect of nature. Paradigms arise from research achievements which the scientific community chooses to valorize and hail as particularly insightful and successful reconceptualizations of natural phenomena, during periods when the previously accepted paradigm has come into question. It is important to understand that, for Kuhn, revolution is extraordinary, and not the normal condition of the scientific endeavor. Kuhn strongly contrasted the relatively brief periods of crisis and revolution with the much longer periods in which "normal" science takes place. Normal scientific research does not aim at true novelty in Kuhn's view, but strives to refine existing measurements and achieve better precision within the conceptual confines of the dominant paradigm of the period. Normal research therefore largely appears to consist of the kind of steady, cumulative advances described by the traditional view of the history of science. These incremental advances are like solving jigsaw puzzles, activities with clearly defined parameters, general expectations, and varieties of outcomes.
• Although normal science constitutes the vast majority of science, Kuhn grants theoretical priority to the extraordinary periods of scientific revolution, when significant anomalies in the current paradigm have accumulated to the point that a crisis occurs. This is when a paradigm shift occurs. The acknowledgement of anomalies by a community of practitioners operating within a paradigm occurs only with great difficulty.
• By way of example, Kuhn cites an experiment by Bruner and Postman in which anomalous cards (a red six of spades, a black four of hearts) were introduced into a rapid series of visual encounters by subjects. (pp. 62-64) The subjects initially almost always identified the anomalous cards incorrectly as other normal cards, and only gradually became aware of the problematic nature of the "odd" cards, sometimes never gaining an understanding of what they were in fact seeing despite numerous repetitions. Their paradigm for what cards look like in terms of color and suite was too firmly entrenched to let them see what was actually in front of them. This visual experiment is typical of Kuhn's visual analogies in describing paradigm shifts. He draws many parallels between "gestalt shifts" in visual recognition of new figures in a picture, and the cognitive shifts which occur when scientists begin to see new connections in data which they encounter in anomalous experiments. When practitioners experience a true paradigm shift, the entire context of the questions they are asking change. Kuhn claimed that those who held viewpoints on either side of a paradigm shift had incommensurable views; they lived in different worlds from one another and in a sense could no longer communicate with each other. Kuhn used many historical examples to illustrate this point, for example the notion of curved space developed in Einstein's general theory of relativity. (p. 149) Paradigm shifts do not, however, take place abruptly (as in a visual gestalt shift) but over a period of time, and through interaction among a community of experts.

Social Study of Knowledge

• Beyond the concept of paradigms, Kuhn is perhaps most significant for his underlying general contribution to the discussion of the authority of science, and the social character of scientific advancement. Kuhn maintained that the traditional notion of scientific progress (distinct discoveries by individual scientists) was incorrect because real advances only occur over a period of time in group interaction.
• He puts forward this thesis through the examination of particular cases, such as the frequently cited discovery of oxygen in the early 1770s. He concludes that oxygen emerged as a concept during the course of a variety of very different experiments between 1774 and 1777 by several scientists, and cannot properly be attributed to discovery by an individual such as Priestley or Lavoisier. The concept of oxygen did not exist before this period, and emerged from the interacting group endeavors during this period.
• Science's special claim to authoritative knowledge is usually attributed to a rule-governed method for obtaining accurate observations of a foundational reality, rather than the social interaction of practitioners. By situating scientific advances in the realm of social interaction, Kuhn put forward a significant articulation of the social foundation of science.
• Kuhn's book was cast in terms of historiography, but has received much more attention in the areas of philosophy of science and sociological studies of science. [Gutting, 1980]
• Structure has caused a great deal of turmoil in philosophy of science since its appearance, particularly in the Anglo-American tradition of that discipline. Hoyningen-Huene has identified the key set of challenges which Kuhn raised for philosophers of science, and (despite varied counter-attacks) has had major influence on empirical concepts in this discipline. [Hoyningen-Huene, 1998]
• Kuhn's work was seen from the beginning by many as a bridge between Anglo-American philosophy of science and French theorists such as Foucault and Habermas. [Gutting, 1979]
• Among sociologists, Structure was one of the most influential works in the genesis of the current strong sociological studies of scientific knowledge, and is still defended as a core work in this area. [Barker, 1998]

Bibliography

Barker, Peter.  "Kuhn and the Sociological Revolution," in Configurations 
   6.1 (1998): 21-32.

Gutting, Gary.  "Continental Philosophy of Science," in: Current Research 
   in Philosophy of Science. Peter D. Asquith & Henry E. Kyburg, Jr. (Eds.). 
   East Lansing, Mich. : Philosophy of Science Association, 1979.

Gutting, Gary (Ed.).  Paradigms and Revolutions: Appraisals and 
   Applications of Thomas Kuhn's Philosophy of Science. Notre Dame: 
   University of Notre Dame Press, 1980.

Hoyningen-Huene, Paul.  "On Thomas Kuhn's Philosophical Significance," in 
   Configurations 6.1 (1998): 1-14.

Kuhn, Thomas S.  The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 2nd Ed.  
   Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970.

Related Links

• Shifting Science - Kuhn Page