Lorraine Daston & Robert J. Richards 
Kuhn’s ‘Structure of Scientific Revolutions’ at Fifty [EPUB ebook] 
Reflections on a Science Classic

Thomas S. Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions was a watershed event when it was published in 1962, upending the previous understanding of science as a slow, logical accumulation of facts and introducing, with the concept of the "paradigm shift, " social and psychological considerations into the heart of the scientific process. More than fifty years after its publication, Kuhn’s work continues to influence thinkers in a wide range of fields, including scientists, historians, and sociologists. It is clear that The Structure of Scientific Revolutions itself marks no less of a paradigm shift than those it describes. In Kuhn s Structure of Scientific Revolutions at Fifty, leading social scientists and philosophers explore the origins of Kuhn s masterwork and its legacy fifty years on. These essays exhume important historical context for Kuhn s work, critically analyzing its foundations in twentieth-century science, politics, and Kuhn s own intellectual biography: his experiences as a physics graduate student, his close relationship with psychologists before and after the publication of Structure, and the Cold War framework of terms such as world view and paradigm.