Quotessence
Home / Authors / Thomas Kuhn
Thomas Kuhn

Thomas Kuhn Quotes

Physicist

Filter quotes by topic

AllScienceParadigmScientistNormalRevolutionCommunityMenTheoryWayCrisisHe ManResearchScientific RevolutionWorldAimDifferentFieldsMayNoveltyRevolutionary

Famous Thomas Kuhn Quotes

“To turn Karl [Popper]'s view on its head, it is precisely the abandonment of critical discourse that marks the transition of science. Once a field has made the transition, critical discourse recurs only at moments of crisis when the bases of the field are again in jeopardy. Only when they must choose between competing theories do scientists behave like philosophers.”

MadeMomentsScienceTurnsViewsFieldsTheoryCriticismScientistBasesMarkCrisisPhilosopherCriticalBehaveTransitionDiscourseCompetingAbandonmentJeopardy
Book:The Essential Tension: Selected Studies in Scientific Tradition and Change
Create image

“Individuals who break through by inventing a new paradigm are almost always either very young men or very new to the field whose paradigm they change. These are the men who, being little committed by prior practice to the traditional rules of normal science, are particularly likely to see that those rules no longer define a playable game and conceive another set that can replace them.”

MenLittlesYoungGamesIndividualBreakPracticeFieldsHe ManNormalIndividualityCommittedTraditionalYoung ManParadigmInventingBreak Through
Author:Thomas Kuhn
Create image

“It is, I think, particularly in periods of acknowledged crisis that scientists have turned to philosophical analysis as a device for unlocking the riddles of their field. Scientists have not generally needed or wanted to be philosophers.”

ThinkingWantedFieldsNeededPeriodsScientistPhilosophicalCrisisPhilosopherAnalysisDevicesRiddleUnlocking
Book:The Structure of Scientific Revolutions: 50th Anniversary Edition
Create image