The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

by Kuhn, Thomas S.

• ISBN13: 9780226458083
• ISBN10: 0226458083
• Edition: 3rd
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1996-12-15
• Publisher: Univ of Chicago Pr

Summary

Thomas S. Kuhn's classic book is now available with a new index. "A landmark in intellectual history which has attracted attention far beyond its own immediate field. . . . It is written with a combination of depth and clarity that make it an almost unbroken series of aphorisms. . . . Kuhn does not permit truth to be a criterion of scientific theories, he would presumably not claim his own theory to be true. But if causing a revolution is the hallmark of a superior paradigm, [this book] has been a resounding success." Nicholas Wade, Science "Perhaps the best explanation of [the] process of discovery." William Erwin Thompson,New York Times Book Review "Occasionally there emerges a book which has an influence far beyond its originally intended audience. . . . Thomas Kuhn'sThe Structure of Scientific Revolutions. . . has clearly emerged as just such a work." Ron Johnston,Times Higher Education Supplement "Among the most influential academic books in this century." Choice One of "The Hundred Most Influential Books Since the Second World War,"Times Literary Supplement Thomas S. Kuhn was the Laurence Rockefeller Professor Emeritus of linguistics and philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His books includeThe Essential Tension; Black-Body Theory and the Quantum Discontinuity, 1894-1912;andThe Copernican Revolution.

Table of Contents

Preface	vii
I. Introduction: A Role for History	1	(9)
II. The Route to Normal Science	10	(13)
III. The Nature of Normal Science	23	(12)
IV. Normal Science as Puzzle-solving	35	(8)
V. The Priority of Paradigms	43	(9)
VI. Anomaly and the Emergence of Scientific Discoveries	52	(14)
VII. Crisis and the Emergence of Scientific Theories	66	(11)
VIII. The Response to Crisis	77	(15)
IX. The Nature and Necessity of Scientific Revolutions	92	(19)
X. Revolutions as Changes of World View	111	(25)
XI. The Invisibility of Revolutions	136	(8)
XII. The Resolutions of Revolutions	144	(16)
XIII. Progress through Revolutions	160	(14)
Postscript-1969	174	(37)
Index	211