ABSTRACT
Thomas Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions (hereafter, SSR) is one of the most important academic books of the last century. Viewing it at the distance of a half century, one can say with confidence that Kuhn fundamentally altered perceptions about science and its history, not merely among professional historians but also among practicing scientists, philosophers of science, a variety of scholars in many disciplines, and a large lay audience. In ways Kuhn himself did not always understand or appreciate, his work gave new or renewed life to fields such as sociology of science, rhetoric of science, and cultural studies of science. Philosophy of science was also importantly altered—Kuhn is widely understood to have been the largest figure in the movement away from logical empiricism and toward a new and richer, if more difficult to characterize, phase of philosophical understanding of science. Philosophers took up Kuhn early and with characteristic vehemence. Some philosophers of science such as Karl Popper early on found Kuhn’s account of science not merely wrongheaded but dangerous. Other philosophers, such as Richard Rorty, by the end of the 1970s were keen to co-opt Kuhn’s work for their own purposes, however far those purposes might have been from Kuhn’s. The philosophical community played a large role in shaping Kuhn’s development after SSR, as he was drawn into discussions of meaning and reference, realism, and rationality. 2
