The Structure Of Scientific Revolutions Quotes & Sayings

Science is an inherent contradiction - systematic wonder - applied to the natural world. In its mundane form, the methodical instinct prevails and the result, an orderly procession of papers, advances the perimeter of knowledge, step by laborious step. Great scientific minds partake of that daily discipline and can also suspend it, yielding to the sheer love of allowing the mental engine to spin free. And then Einstein imagines himself riding a light beam, Kekule formulates the structure of benzene in a dream, and Fleming's eye travels past the annoying mold on his glassware to the clear ring surrounding it - a lucid halo in a dish otherwise opaque with bacteria - and penicillin is born. Who knows how many scientific revolutions have been missed because their potential inaugurators disregarded the whimsical, the incidental, the inconvenient inside the laboratory? — Thomas Lewis

Thomas Kuhn's book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions has probably been more widely read - and more widely misinterpreted - than any other book in the recent philosophy of science. The broad circulation of his views has generated a popular caricature of Kuhn's position. According to this popular caricature, scientists working in a field belong to a club. All club members are required to agree on main points of doctrine. Indeed, the price of admission is several years of graduate education, during which the chief dogmas are inculcated. The views of outsiders are ignored. Now I want to emphasize that this is a hopeless caricature, both of the practice of scientists and of Kuhn's analysis of the practice. Nevertheless, the caricature has become commonly accepted as a faithful representation, thereby lending support to the Creationists' claims that their views are arrogantly disregarded. — Philip Kitcher

The term paradigm shift was introduced by Thomas Kuhn in his highly influential landmark book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. — Stephen R. Covey

Western Civilization was responsible for a paradigm shift in history. It created the industrial and scientific revolutions that enabled the birth of a transportation, communications and knowledge revolution unprecedented in the 5 billion year history of this planet. Unfortunately this revolution took place amidst a moral vacuum at the very top of the power structure. It is as if a three year old child had been given control over both a candy story and a shotgun. He was able to use the shotgun to get all the candy he wanted but he had no idea what to do next. Whenever somebody tried to tell him too much candy was bad for him, he shot the person who said that. — Benjamin Fulford

As Thomas Kuhn pointed out in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, new scientific theories in any field are regarded with skepticism because scientists become attached to the old perspective earlier in their careers. — Marilyn Ferguson