Thomas Kuhn Quotes
Thomas Samuel Kuhn was an American historian and philosopher of science whose 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions changed how the development of the natural sciences is understood. Trained originally as a physicist at Harvard, he turned to the history of science and produced studies of the Copernican revolution and of the early quantum theory before publishing the great synthetic work that introduced the vocabulary of paradigms, normal science, anomalies, crises, and revolutionary change. The quotes below are attributed to Thomas Kuhn, organized by topic.
Thomas Kuhn on Knowledge
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Attributed to Thomas Kuhn:
“Normal science means research firmly based upon one or more past scientific achievements.”
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Attributed to Thomas Kuhn:
“Crises are the necessary preludes to the emergence of new theories.”
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Attributed to Thomas Kuhn:
“A paradigm is what the members of a scientific community share.”
Thomas Kuhn on Truth
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Attributed to Thomas Kuhn:
“Two scientists working in different paradigms see different worlds.”
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Attributed to Thomas Kuhn:
“Out of context, the new is unintelligible to the old.”