Thomas Kuhn - Structure of Scientific Revolutions (5 books)

THOMAS S. KUHN (1922-1996) was an American physicist, historian, and philosopher of science.

THE STRUCTURE OF SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTIONS (1962) was a landmark event in the history and philosophy of science and became profoundly influential in both academic and popular circles. It is easy to forget how provocative and challenging its ideas once were, because they have become part of our daily consciousness, pervading our thinking to the point that we take them for granted. Kuhn challenged long-standing linear notions of scientific progress, arguing that transformative ideas don’t arise from the day-to-day, gradual process of experimentation and data accumulation but that the revolutions in science -- those breakthrough moments that disrupt accepted thinking and offer unanticipated ideas -- occur outside of "normal science," as he called it. Such transformations are the now-famous "paradigm shifts". I still remember the intellectual exhilaration I felt upon first reading the book.

THE COPERNICAN REVOLUTION (1957) demonstrated that the solution to a highly technical problem can alter our basic thought processes and attitudes. The Copernican revolution is shown to be simultaneously an episode in the internal development of astronomy, a critical turning point in the evolution of scientific thought, and a crisis in Western man's concept of his relation to the universe and to God.

The sixteen essays in THE ESSENTIAL TENSION (1977) -- divided into two groups, historiographic and metahistorical studies -- serve to illuminate, explain, modify, and defend the theses presented in "Structure". BLACK-BODY THEORY AND THE QUANTUM DISCONTINUITY (1978) is a scientific detective story and assessment of the way the idea of quanta of radiation became part of 20th century physics. According to Kuhn, writing in the Afterword, the book "provides the most fully realized illustration of the concept of history of science basic to my historical publications. The same conception underlies my more philosophical writing -- is, indeed, what ties these apparently disparate aspects of my work together."

THE ROAD SINCE STRUCTURE (2000), assembled with Kuhn's input before his death in 1996, follows the development of his thought through the later years of his life. Collected here are several essays extending and rethinking the perspectives of "Structure" as well as an extensive and revealing autobiographical interview.


The following books are in PDF format:

* BLACK-BODY THEORY AND THE QUANTUM DISCONTINUITY, 1894-1912 (University of Chicago, 1987). With a new Afterword.

* THE COPERNICAN REVOLUTION: Planetary Astronomy in the Development of Western Thought (Harvard University Press, 1985).

* THE ESSENTIAL TENSION: Selected Studies in Scientific Tradition and Change (University of Chicago, 1977).

* THE ROAD SINCE STRUCTURE: Philosophical Essays, 1970-1993, with an Autobiographical Interview (University of Chicago, 2000). Edited by James Conant and John Haugeland.

* THE STRUCTURE OF SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTIONS (University of Chicago, 1996). Third Edition.