Kuhn, Thomas Samuel

Kuhn, Thomas Samuel, 1922-96, American philosopher and historian of science, b. Cincinnati, Ohio. He trained as a physicist at Harvard (Ph.D. 1949), where he taught the history of science from 1948 to 1956. He subsequently taught at the Univ. of California, Berkeley (until 1964), Princeton (until 1979), and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (until 1991). In his highly influential work The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), Kuhn distinguished between normal science and revolutionary science. In normal science, researchers operating within a particular "paradigm," i.e., Ptolemaic astronomy, engage in activity that involves solving problems related to the paradigm. In revolutionary science, which occurs rarely, researchers abandon one paradigm, i.e. Ptolemaic astronomy, and embrace another, i.e., Copernican astronomy. Kuhn held the abandoned paradigm and the embraced one to be "incommensurable" with one another such that the fundamental concepts of one cannot be rendered by the terms of the other. The jump from one paradigm to another, he argued, has a sociological explanation, but no strictly rational justification. Kuhn's other works include The Copernican Revolution (1957) and The Essential Tension (1977).

(born July 18, 1922, Cincinnati, Ohio, U.S.—died June 17, 1996, Cambridge, Mass.) U.S. historian and philosopher of science. He taught at Berkeley (1956–64), Princeton (1964–79), and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1979–91). In his highly influential work The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), he questioned the previously accepted view of scientific progress as a gradual accumulation of knowledge based on universally valid experimental methods and results, claiming that progress was often achieved by far-reaching “paradigm shifts.” His other works include The Copernican Revolution (1957), The Essential Tension (1977), and Black-Body Theory and the Quantum Discontinuity (1978).

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Kuhn is the surname of the following people:

• Abraham Kuhn, founder, Kuhn, Loeb & Co.
• Adalbert Kuhn, German philologist and folklorist,
• Alfred Kuhn, a social systems theorist
• Bradley M. Kuhn, a free software activist
• Bowie Kuhn, former commissioner of Major League Baseball
• Fritz Kuhn, German Green Party politician
• Fritz Julius Kuhn, leader of the German American Bund
• Köbi Kuhn, Head Coach of the Switzerland national football team
• Harold W. Kuhn, 1980 John von Neumann Theory Prize winner, developed Kuhn poker.
• Richard Kuhn, winner of the 1938 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
• Robert Lawrence Kuhn, author, investment banker, China specialist, PBS host
• Simone Kuhn, Swiss beach volleyball player
• Thomas Samuel Kuhn, philosopher and historian of science
• Walt Kuhn

See also

• Kuhn Island, an island of Greenland.
• Kuhn, Loeb & Co.
• Kuhn (company), a French manufacturer of agricultural machinery, especially mowers and ploughs.
• Kuhn (.hack), a fictional character of the .hack franchise.