한
All people

PHILOSOPHY PROFILE

Thomas Kuhn

1962

START WITH THE PUZZLE

Should a successful research tradition keep solving puzzles despite an anomaly, and when should it change frameworks?

Evidence-backed moments
2
Timeline events
1
Verified places
1

This is a guided intellectual story assembled from verified claims, works, and events in which this thinker actually appears. It avoids filling gaps with a generic encyclopedia biography.

Why this thinker is worth following

Story 1What makes an inquiry scientific?

Kuhn — Normal-science puzzles and paradigm change

The question that opens it

Should a successful research tradition keep solving puzzles despite an anomaly, and when should it change frameworks?

Follow the argument, not just the name
  1. 1

    Kuhn's normal science solves puzzles under shared exemplars and standards; anomalies become conditions for crisis and revolution when they accumulate or become especially consequential.

    Check the evidence

    This is an evidence-linked editorial account, not a direct quotation.

    • Thomas Kuhn

      Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

      Locator: §2.2 Paradigms and Normal Science; §2.3 Crisis and Revolutions

      Open source
  2. 2

    Incommensurability is not the simple claim that choice ignores evidence or reasons; Kuhn describes values such as accuracy, scope, simplicity, and fruitfulness as relevant to judgment.

    Check the evidence

    This is an evidence-linked editorial account, not a direct quotation.

    • Thomas Kuhn

      Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

      Locator: §3.1 Methodological Incommensurability; §4.1 Objectivity and Value Judgment

      Open source
Try the full inquiry

Decisive moments in time

  1. 1962

    Published in Chicago, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions depicts scientific time as alternating normal work and revolutionary change.

    Chicago · Publication

    PerspectiveOpen in question

Open the places behind the story

Continue through questions and works