ABSTRACT
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions was published in 1962. The impact of its doctrines outside of the philosophy of science is difficult to overstate. Kuhn’s doctrine became the lever with which historians, psychologists, sociologists, dissenting philosophers, scientists, politicians, humanists of every stripe, sought to undermine logical positivism’s claims about science as objective knowledge controlled by experience. Meanwhile, within philosophy of science, developments that began earlier in the 1950s were reinforcing Kuhn’s
Much of the philosophical underpinnings for views like Kuhn’s can be found in the work of an equally influential philosopher, W. V. O. Quine, who attacked logical positivism “from within” so to speak. A student of the positivists, Quine was among the first to see that the epistemology underlying their philosophy of science could not satisfy its own requirements for objective knowledge, and was based on a series of unsupportable distinctions. By casting doubt on the foundations of a tradition in philosophy that went back to Locke, Berkeley and Hume, Quine made it impossible for philosophers of science to ignore the controversial claims of Kuhn and those sociologists, psychologists, and historians ready to employ his insights to uncover the status of science as a “sacred cow.” But more important, they freed philosophers to make use of science in framing their metaphysics, epistemology and their own philosophy of science.
