The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

Five phases1

Pre-paradigm, normal science, crisis, revolution, then normal science again under the new paradigm.

Scientists keep faith until there is an alternative1

However many anomalies persist, scientists do not give up a paradigm until a credible rival exists.

Textbooks are rewritten1

After a shift, textbooks and often the history of the field are rewritten as if the new view were inevitable.

The Copernican example1

Copernicus's model was at first no more accurate than Ptolemy's; Kuhn says his contemporaries were right to reject it.

Exemplars1

In the postscript Kuhn substituted "exemplars" for "paradigm": the problems and solutions students learn from the start.

Progress as better puzzle-solving1

Later theories are better puzzle-solving instruments; Kuhn called himself a convinced believer in scientific progress.

Reading Aristotle in 19471

Teaching humanities students, Kuhn found Aristotle's physics was not bad Newton, just different.

Ludwik Fleck1

Fleck's 1935 sociology of scientific knowledge anticipated central ideas; Kuhn read it in 1950.

Revisions are smaller and more frequent1

Stephen Toulmin argued that change in science is more frequent and less dramatic than Kuhn's model allows.

Incommensurability is too radical1

Carl Kordig, Hartry Field and Donald Davidson argued that rival theories can be compared, or that the idea is incoherent.

Perception is not theory-laden1

Jerry Fodor pointed to illusions that persist when we know better, against the claim that theory shapes what we see.