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News

News: Autumn 1996

Kuhn obituary

The death of one modern giant (Karl Popper) of the Philosophy of Science two years ago has been followed by the death of another giant of the genre, Thomas Kuhn, discoverer of the pernicious paradigm. Kuhn investigated the distinction between science as it ought to be, and science as it really is, finding that instead of scientific progress marching ahead smoothly, it staggers along in fits and starts as it shambles from one paradigm to another.

Kuhn’s most famous work, the Structure of Scientific Revolutions, was written after he started teaching the history of science and decided that Aristotle’s Physics was not simply wrong, but rather that the ideas and concepts were radically different, yet less useful than Newton’s or Einstein’s. He then tried to explain sociologically why science moves from one set of explanations to another.

His magnum opus sold over 1 million copies and provoked much debate – especially over words like ‘paradigm’ which seemed to have dozens of differing meanings in his book! Difficulties in pinning him down were exacerbated by exchanges such as: “Dr Kuhn, are you a realist?” “Of course!” “But Dr Kuhn, don’t you argue that whenever theories change, the whole world then changes too?” “Of course!” Thomas Kuhn was born in Ohio and died of cancer on 20th June aged 73.

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