A role for history : introduction The route to normal science The nature of normal science Normal science as puzzle-solving The priority of paradigms Anomaly and the emergence of scientific discoveries Crisis and the emergence of scientific theories The response to crisis The nature and necessity of scientific revolutions Revolutions as changes of world view The invisibility of revolutions The resolution of revolutions Progress through revolutions
A good book may have the power to change the way we see the world, but a great book actually becomes part of our daily consciousness, pervading our thinking to the point that we take it for granted, and we forget how provocative and challenging its ideas once were - and still are. "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" is that kind of book. With "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions", Kuhn challenged long-standing linear notions of scientific progress, arguing that transformative ideas don’t arise from the day-to-day, gradual process of experimentation and data accumulation but that the revolutions in science, those breakthrough moments that disrupt accepted thinking and offer unanticipated ideas, occur outside of "normal science", as he called it. Though Kuhn was writing when physics ruled the sciences, his ideas on how scientific revolutions bring order to the anomalies that amass over time in research experiments are still instructive in our biotech age. Thomas S. Kuhn, formerly on the faculty of the University of California, is now professor of the history of science at Princeton.