The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

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Summary: The book that does not flow
Review: The style of the text does not flow from sentence to sentence or from paragraph to paragraph.

In one sentence the author will mention Newton, Alton and Einstein with technical references which baffels the reader.

With the disjunct manner in which it is written it is a wonder that any reader can retain any knowledge from this book.

When I read most books I reflect during the day as to whether a book has any relevence to me. This is one book I rarely thought about the next day. This is too bad because the title is very intriguing.

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Summary: Unscientific nonsense
Review: If there's an answer (and there may not be an answer) then Kuhn hasn't found it. Postmodernistists who do not know science but who like to 'criticize' science often cite this book. Have they understood it? I haven't, because the argument makes no sense. I do understand physics, which does. Kuhn was not really a working scientist, and cannot describe what scientists do (see, however, the beautiful essays on creativity by Einstein, Hadamaard, and Poincare). Consider the following: a successlul speculator cannot even explain sensibly how he makes money (witness Soros's book "The Alchemy of Finance"). How can a nonscientist, or even a scientist, be expected account 'systematically' for the wonder of scientific discovery?

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Summary: Excellent hypothesis in need of an update
Review: Amazon recommended this book and this time I found the recommendation to be very good indeed. Kuhn develops is argument slowly and methodically building carefully upon his initial themes. His precise style reminds me of Darwin’s Origin of Species although this book is far more readable. His ideas have stood the test of time and have influenced many fields as is obvious from the overuse of his phrase the “paradigm shift”. I enjoyed the book thoroughly but felt it could do with an update. I would be particularly interested in the overlap between his ideas and complexity theory, the similarities between paradigm shifts and phase transitions and the ways in which his argument may be influenced by the works of people like Matt Ridley and his ideas on the evolution of human cooperation detailed in his book “The Origins of Virtue”

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Summary: A stolid middle ground in the philosophy of science.
Review: I've always seen Kuhn as a middle ground between Popper and Feyerabend (Someone who took Kuhn's idea about society and personality influencing science, and ran with it) for the most part. I think Popper is a better writer, Feyerabend says more interesting and though provoking things, but if you want something approaching a synthesis of the falsifiability doctrine and the social dynamic way of looking at things, Kuhn, and this book by Kuhn is essential.

This is where people who outgrow Gould and Dawkins should be coming. It's more dry, and less populist than these two, but it provides for a deeper understanding.

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Summary: Think Outside Boundary
Review: In general, this book uses many examples to illustrate the concept of "paradigm" and to support his argument or personal attitudes towards the scientific community and educational system (or textbook addiction in my words). In this book, Kuhn raises a critical question that is how development through revolutions can be compatible with the apparently unique character of scientific progress.

Though considerable examples have been illustrated to explain the importance of paradigm on normal science, there is no clear and specific definition on "paradigm." In contrast, the concept of "paradigm" varies from one chapter to another. Examples like shared paradigms (p.11) and community's paradigms (p.43). When reading this book, we must pay attention on what situations Kuhn refers to.

Paradigm itself includes the concepts (elements or substances) of rules, laws, models and the like. It also takes into account of social psychology, metaphysics, and the other disciplines. The occurrence of paradigm testing is due to the failure to solve crisis. And the testing occurs only when there is competition between two rival paradigms. The transformation process is not simply bounded by what Popper's falsification (p.146) or probability verification (p.145). However, in Kuhn's point of view, paradigms and theories are not merely man-made interpretations of given data. A distinction should be made between theories and facts. Scientists assume theories; they know facts to be true, within acceptable limits of confidence. As time advances, they replace one theory with another, arguably a better one. What should be beyond argument is that there is an accretion of known facts.

A scientific revolution - revolution means a complete change, especially in methods of government when caused by the overthrow of one system by force [in accordance with Oxford Dictionary]. In fact, science is not a system of certain, or well-established, statements; nor is it a system which steadily advances towards an equilibrium state. Besides, science has more than mere biological survival value. Science is a means to acquire knowledge and to search for truth. That's what I believe scientific discovery should be. Revolution provides the underlying meaning of what Kuhn wants to see in changing the lifelong resistance of scientific community. Nothing important to his argument depends on crisis is being an absolute prerequisite to revolutions.

Undoubtedly, the role for history is the domain of this book. The historian must compare the community's paradigms with each other and with its current research reports so as to discover any isolate elements explicitly or implicitly. The importance of paradigms is to determine normal science without intervention of discoverable rules. I agree with what Kuhn's belief - transforming paradigms is the only way to make normal science progress. However, the problem is that science, lives in the physical world, that crude world of contradictory, non-linear material reality. There is no definite answer even we have a set of nice paradigms.

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Summary: [e-mail] got it wrong...
Review: As a scientist and someone who has always loved this book, I wanted to try and clarify Kuhn's message for Chris.

Kuhn is NOT arguing that anything that silly socio-psychobabble that all science is colored by personal perspective, and therefore faulty. What Kuhn doing is making the essential connection between the immutable fact and the people discovering and interpreting it. Scientists collect facts and build from them an idea of how things work as a whole. This is what he calls a paradigm. It thoroughly describes our reality as we have thus far been able to describe it. BUT: when a fact is discovered that does not fit this paradigm, the reality itself is discarded, and after a bit of chaos, a new paradigm is installed. Thus, science uses fact to produce a way of interpreting the world that more and more closely approximates reality. Point is, until anyone proves otherwise, the paradigm in place is the one that works. Science is the continual establishment and discarding of these paradigms as fact permits.

While this seems simple now, when it came out it was a revolutionary contradiction to the staid and now seemingly antiquated belief that science is a clean, steady progression to a full understanding of all phenomena. Truth is that, as Kuhn so elegantly illustrates, it moves by jumps and starts, with periodic changes in the equilibrium of things.

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Summary: A Wonderful Historical Document
Review: This book is a classic and will be rememebered, those who give it less than five stars, I think, are experiencing intellectual panty creep because of Kuhn's assertion that science isn't fundamentally driven by the search for truth.

The critics have a point, Kuhn's own theory can be used to place some of his arguments in context, in 1962 people thought truth was an easy thing to discover, I think the most conservative academic today understands how difficult it can be to pin a new idea down, how compelling is the desire to think that what we believe to be truth is, in fact, true.

Kuhn's book was a milestone, one author's attempt to show that science is not ruled only by logic, there's a human element involved, and while I think he went overboard and wasn't the only person who took this approach I understand and respect and think readers will appreciate the contributions made by this book.

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Summary: Here's some help if you're struggling with this book
Review: The negative reviews of this classic that are posted here unfortunately come from people who have missed the core proposition of Kuhn's book, that science is not the pricess of discovery of true facts about the natural world, that instead it is the process of the social construction of facts about the natural world, facts whose relevance changes as science goes through successive revolutions. The insight he provides on the way that science rewrites history from a present-centered perspective to make science appear progressive have been missed by these readers.

The cynical reader may need more help before she is convinced that science may not be about approaching truth about the natural world. A couple of other books that may help the inquisitive reader to gain more insight into this fascinating subject are: Feyerabend, Against Method; Kleck, Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact; Harry Collins, The Golem; and Harry Collines, Changing Order.

Enjoy the exploration!

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Summary: Kuhn helps us to understand the digital music revolution
Review: This book is assigned reading for the advanced seminar I am teaching this fall at Loyola Law School on the digital delivery of entertainment products. The interface between IT and IP, triggered by the open format MP3 "revolution", brings Kuhn's seminal work into a realm of practical and pragmatic importance like never before. The old network of interrelations in the music and entertainment business has broken down, and a new paradigm is emerging, with or without Kuhn's help. However, those who have assimilated the roadmap and directions for paradigmatic change are better eqippped to assess and act upon the dizzying flow of new information, business models, and ideas, that result from the appearance of anomalies and the resulting crises. I also teach music and entertainment law at Tulane Law School, and there we are hosting a "Music in the Digital Millenium" Forum in Nov of 1999, dedicating the academic forum to Prof. Kuhn and this work, the most underevaluatred philosophical book of the century. Prof. Justin A. Zitler

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Summary: A wrong book by a fuzzy thinker
Review: Science is hard; that's why so many people fill the skies with supernatural entities in order to have an explanation for why we're here. Kuhn does the same: saying that prevailing views of science change from time to time, then coming up with some blatant kablooie that explains it in accordance with his particular worldview. He pays no attention to the fact that science is a search for the truths of nature, not a search for fresh paradigms, and that paradigms only shift when there's reasonable evidence that theories are moving closer to the truth. A bad book based on the wrong premise.