The Structure of Scientific Revolutions: 50th Anniversary Edition

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. When it was first published in 1962, it was a landmark event in the history and philosophy of science. Fifty years later, it still has many lessons to teach.

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.

This new edition of Kuhn’s essential work in the history of science includes an insightful introduction by Ian Hacking, which clarifies terms popularized by Kuhn, including paradigm and incommensurability, and applies Kuhn’s ideas to the science of today. Usefully keyed to the separate sections of the book, Hacking’s introduction provides important background information as well as a contemporary context.  Newly designed, with an expanded index, this edition will be eagerly welcomed by the next generation of readers seeking to understand the history of our perspectives on science.

• Theory and Reality: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science (Science and Its Conceptual Foundations series)
• Against Method
• The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA
• The Logic of Scientific Discovery
• The Evolution of Physics
• Philosophy of Science: A Very Short Introduction
• The Whale and the Reactor: A Search for Limits in an Age of High Technology
• Writing Science: How to Write Papers That Get Cited and Proposals That Get Funded
• A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (Dover Thrift Editions)
• Philosophy of Science: A New Introduction (Fundamentals of Philosophy Series)