ABSTRACT
Science is the empirical study of the world. Its peculiar combination of theory and observation is the basis of advances in medicine, computing, transport and many other aspects of our lives. It has allowed us to send astronauts into space. The rise of science in the seventeenth century was one of the most significant developments in the history of humanity. But does science progress by the gradual accumulation of knowledge, with each generation of scientists refining their understanding of the world to give a more accurate picture of reality? Up until the early 1960s this was the dominant view amongst philosophers of science. Thomas Kuhn, however, felt that it gave a misleading picture of how science actually functioned. The process is less gradual than had been appreciated, and might not even get closer to the truth. There are, he argued, alternating periods of normal science followed by periods of crisis and then, often though not inevitably, scientific revolution. In normal science, scientists agree about the rules, methods and standards for scientific research, and there is a great deal of consensus about how to do research in any particular area; in periods of revolution these rules and expectations are transformed. The monopoly on method and explanation dissolves and alternative assumptions and methodologies come to the fore. That is the main message of Kuhn’s influential study of the history of science, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), a book which270 has had a deep influence on the philosophy of science, and which has sold well over a million copies. Kuhn’s approach was grounded in historical research, but is essentially philosophical: he presents a theoretical account of how scientists work, and how they change their outlook fundamentally in the light of what he labels a new paradigm. He also gives a broader account of how understanding changes following what he calls a paradigm shift. Kuhn began his career as a physicist before switching his attention to the history of science and to philosophical issues that emerge from that, and his writing is rich in scientific examples. At heart, though, it is a philosophical account because of the very general claims he makes about the nature of scientific research.
