Thomas Kuhn

Thomas Samuel Kuhn ( Cincinnati ( Ohio ), 18 July 1922 - Cambridge ( Massachusetts ), 17 June 1996 ) was an American physicist and philosopher of science . Kuhn is best known for his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) in which he brings forward the idea that science is not gradual evolution but by paradigm shiftschanged abruptly.



Contents
*1 His life  ==His life [  edit ] == He was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, in a Jewish family. His father was Samuel L. Kuhn, an industrial engineer and his mother Minette Stroock Kuhn. He received his undergraduate degree in physics in 1943, his master's degree in 1946 and his doctorate in 1949 at the Harvard University . He gave a course in history of science from 1948 to 1956 at the suggestion of James Conant. Then he went to the University of California, Berkeley, where he taught both in the department of philosophy and history. In 1961 he was appointed professor of history of science. In 1964 he went to Princeton University as M. Taylor Pyne Professor of philosophy of science and history. In 1979 he was appointed Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he remained until 1991. Three years later, was diagnosed with cancer, from which he died in 1996. Kuhn was married twice, First Kathryn Muhs with whom he had three children and later with Jehane Barton. ==The Structure of Scientific Revolutions [  edit ] == According to Kuhn, through a scientific discipline, the following successive stages:
 * 2 The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
 * 3 Recognition
 * 4 External links

The importance of the views of Kuhn is that he does not look so much at the justification of scientific knowledge claims as the vakfilosofen for him, as Karl Popper and the logical positivists, but as a historian andsociologist . The philosophers of science finding a logical reconstruction of the processes that can provide a justification and legitimation of theories in terms of validity or truth . Before Kuhn others had already pointed out that the validity of theories can only be demonstrated within the context of other theories and experiments.
 * Pre-knowledge: there is no paradigm yet so there is no agreement
 * normal science, there is a paradigm, so unanimity, making progress possible
 * crisis anomalies ie unexplained phenomena in theory be openly acknowledged
 * Revolution: it leads to a new normal science

In this context, Kuhn get a much wider socio-historical significance. The paradigm explicitly refers to social and psychological aspects. Allows the rationality of the scientific enterprise seems to be at stake. Monitoring of scientific views is not the outcome of a rational, but a social process. Paradigms die with their supporters and new paradigms emerge with new generations of researchers. Kuhn's contribution to science theory is often compared to that of Popper and in turn criticized by Imre Lakatos . This episode in the philosophical discussion is also known as the Kuhn-Popper Lakatosdiscussie. ==[Recognition  edit ] == <p style="margin-top:0.5em;line-height:22.3999996185303px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:14px;">In 1954, he was Guggenheim Fellow, and in 1982 he was awarded the George Sarton Medal of the History of Science Society. He received numerous honorary degrees.