Thomas Kuhn

Thomas Samuel Kuhn was born in Cincinnati on July 18, 1922, and earned his bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees in physics at Harvard. His transition to the philosophy of science was prompted by a teaching assignment that required him to explain Aristotle's physics to undergraduates. Kuhn could not understand how someone as brilliant as Aristotle could be so wrong about basic physical principles, until he realized that Aristotle was not wrong within his own framework. The problem was that the framework itself had been replaced. That insight became the foundation of his life's work.

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions was published in 1962 by the University of Chicago Press, initially as a monograph in the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science. Kuhn argued that "normal science" operates within a shared paradigm, a set of theories, methods, and assumptions that define what questions are worth asking and what counts as an acceptable answer. Anomalies accumulate over time, and eventually the weight of unresolved problems triggers a crisis that can only be resolved by replacing the old paradigm with a new one. The transition is not logical but social, driven by a shift in the consensus of a scientific community.

The book's reception was explosive. Karl Popper, Imre Lakatos, and Paul Feyerabend all challenged Kuhn's framework at a 1965 symposium at Bedford College, London. Critics argued that Kuhn's emphasis on social consensus over logical proof introduced an irrational element into science. Supporters argued that Kuhn had finally described how science actually works, as distinct from how it claims to work. The book has sold over one and a half million copies and been translated into dozens of languages. The Academy of Management voted The Principles of Scientific Management the most influential management book of the twentieth century, but Kuhn's Structure may be the most influential book about how any system of knowledge maintains and then loses its grip.

Kuhn taught at Berkeley, Princeton, and MIT, where he held a chair until his retirement. He died on June 17, 1996, at age seventy-three. The concept of the paradigm shift had by then migrated from the philosophy of science into business, politics, education, and casual conversation, often stripped of the precision Kuhn had intended. He once remarked that he was tempted to believe two Thomas Kuhns existed, one who wrote the book and one who was being criticized for it.