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Brief Lives

Thomas Kuhn (1922-1996)

Will Bouwman considers the development of a paradigmatic revolutionary.

In 1962 Thomas Kuhn published a book from which the philosophy of science has not yet recovered, and probably never will. Before this book it was generally assumed that the only history that was relevant to science was recent. Science was believed to be a relentless march towards the truth, every innovation an advance. Scientists may have been standing on the shoulders of giants (to quote Isaac Newton), but every change was assumed to be taking us higher. Ironically, Kuhn the philosopher did what a good scientist does, and actually looked at the evidence.

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