While I found ‘The Structure of Scientific Revolutions’ thoughtful and interesting, it wasn't as transformative as I expected. My mum recommended it to me as a mind-changing book, yet I felt similarly to the author in his 1969 postscript: ‘To the extent that the book portrays scientific development as a succession of tradition-bound periods punctuated by non-cumulative breaks, its theses are undoubtedly of wide applicability. But they should be, for they are borrowed from other fields. Historians of literature, of music, of the arts, of political development, and of many other human activities have long described their subjects in the same way’.

Thus I found Kuhn’s analysis of science’s non-linear progression to be a cogent application of familiar concepts to a new disciplinary context. The writing is very careful and precise, making it rather ponderous to read while also aiding understanding. For the non-scientist, I felt the most important point was that textbooks and popular science books elide and simplify the nature of scientific discovery. While this is by no means malicious, it gives a somewhat misleading impression of cumulative linear progress. Kuhn explores a number of ways and draws on many examples (including the question of when oxygen was discovered) to argue that this is not actually how things work. To wit, ‘The scientists of earlier ages are implicitly represented as having worked upon the same set of fixed problems and in accordance with the same set of fixed canons that the most recent revolution in scientific theory and method has made seem scientific’.

What particularly impressed me about the book was Kuhn’s use of the word ‘paradigm’ in a genuinely meaningful manner. Rarely has there been a more misused word, in the social science and policy worlds at least. I keep a tally of how many times it is used in meetings and documents, with more than three instances a definite indicator of that bullshit's afoot. Here, however, the term is discussed and defined clearly:

Our most recent examples show that paradigms provide scientists not only with a map but also with some of the directions essential for map-making. In learning a paradigm the scientist acquires theory, methods, and standards together, usually in an inextricable mixture. Therefore, when paradigms change, there are usually significant shifts in the criteria determining the legitimacy both of problems and proposed solutions.

I found Kuhn’s thesis a convincing and helpful structure for understanding how science has happened over centuries. It brings up many thought-provoking questions, such as how language mediates observations:

No current attempt to achieve that end has yet come close to a generally applicable language of pure precepts. And those attempts that come closest share one characteristic that strongly reinforces several of this essay’s main theses. From the start they presuppose a paradigm, taken either from a current scientific theory or from some fraction of everyday discourse, and they then try to eliminate from it all non-logical and non-perceptual terms. […] But their result is a language that – like those employed in the sciences – embodies a host of expectations about nature and fails to function the moment these expectations are violated. […] No language thus restricted to reporting a world fully known in advance can produce mere neutral and objective reports on ‘the given’.

Another fascinating question is how the revolutionary shift from one paradigm to another occurs:

Max Planck, surveying his own career in his Scientific Autobiography, sadly remarked that ‘a new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it’.

These facts and others like them are too commonly known to need further emphasis. But they do need re-evaluation. […] The transfer of allegiance from paradigm to paradigm is a conversion experience that cannot be forced. Lifelong resistance, particularly from those whose productive careers have committed them to an older tradition of normal science, is not a violation of scientific standards but an index to the nature of scientific research itself.

A third and very fundamental question that Kuhn raises without dwelling on is whether science needs a final goal. This he links neatly with one of the most controversial aspects of Darwin’s theory of evolution: that it has no end in mind, no higher plan. As the book puts it, ‘The Origin of the Species recognised no goal set by God or nature.’ Progress, argues Kuhn, does not require such a goal to be articulated. The question is nonetheless a fascinating one, as it raises the issue of more specific goals in specific scientific fields and whether they add up to a consistent pattern. Writing in the 1960s, it’s a little surprising that Kuhn never mentions the prosaic military goals of science during the Cold War. Today, research across the disciplines has been infected with the need for outputs to be monetised somehow, or to have semi-plausible commercial potential. Although these goals may be imposed upon scientific institutions from outside, over the decades they must have been internalised to some extent. From a more idealistic perspective, some might state the goal of science as ‘to make the world a better place by increasing our understanding of it’. That is tantamount to inviting a bunch of social scientists (like me) into your lab to argue for hours about what is meant by better, for whom, when, how, etc, etc, etc.

The interdisciplinary nature of ‘The Structure of Scientific Revolutions’ has ensured that it remains relevant and thought-provoking fifty years after first publication. It certainly isn’t a fast read and I had to go over quite a few sentences twice to be clear about what Kuhn was saying. Nonetheless, there is a lot to consider packed into a small space. ( )

I read this book for a college class many years ago. One which I took for fun, on the history of astronomy, to fill out the electives in my schedule. Do students even get to do that any more? Some reporting makes it seem like the College Experience has become very business-like.

In any case, it was a serendipitous thing all around; not only did I enjoy the class, this book left a strong imprint on me too. It's one of the few nonfiction books from my college years that I've kept on my dusty shelves. (Sorry, Calculus, you may be useful but you're just not much fun.) ( )

A seminal work that reoriented the assumptions and practices of academic history of science, as happens rather regularly. ( )

A key text in the history of philosophy of science, it has impacted greatly our thinking and policy. In some ways, Kuhn offers a liberating view in which the benefits of transformative technological change are sudden, of high impact and diffuse. In other ways, there is a sense of inevitability of the process and a sense that the force of technological change was something beyond the actors involved.

I recommend reading this but not stopping here and after looking at a broader history of science text. ( )

Muy interesante, un incentivo a repensar las cosas, no siempre las cosas son como se cree solo por que así a sido desde antes, a veces es necesario repensarlas y puede que descubramos o teoricemos algo “nuevo”, bueno, y si no, ya solo el hecho de pensar y analizarlo es entretenido e interesante… ( )