Thomas S. Kuhn
Historian and philosopher of science
Thomas S. Kuhn was an American historian and philosopher of science. His 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions popularized the term paradigm shift.
1 summary 12 min of listening
American Born 1922 in Cincinnati, United States Died 1996
About Thomas S. Kuhn
Thomas Samuel Kuhn was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, on July 18, 1922, and died on June 17, 1996. He completed his Harvard doctorate in theoretical physics in 1949, then moved toward the history and philosophy of science. He taught at Harvard, the University of California at Berkeley, Princeton University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he became professor emeritus of philosophy. In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, published in 1962, Kuhn argued that scientific fields go through periodic paradigm shifts instead of advancing only in a steady, linear way. He also held that competing paradigms are often incommensurable, meaning their assumptions and terms do not match up one to one.