Thomas Kuhn Quotes

Did you know that Judaism is based on paradigm shifts, Henry? First came Abraham, then came Moses. Then came the prophets, then came the rabbis. Pretty amazing stuff. Each iteration, reaching for the godhead. What comes next, Henry? What comes next? ~ Michael Davidow

Later scientific theories are better than earlier ones for solving puzzles in the often quite different environments to which they are applied. That is not a relativist's position, and it displays the sense in which I am a convinced believer in scientific progress. ~ Thomas Kuhn

Despite all their surface diversity, most jokes and funny incidents have the following logical structure: Typically you lead the listener along a garden path of expectation, slowly building up tension. At the very end, you introduce an unexpected twist that entails a complete reinterpretation of all the preceding data, and moreover, it's critical that the new interpretation, though wholly unexpected, makes as much "sense" of the entire set of facts as did the originally "expected" interpretation.
In this regard, jokes have much in common with scientific creativity, with what Thomas Kuhn calls a "paradigm shift" in response to a single "anomaly." (It's probably not coincidence that many of the most creative scientists have a great sense of humor.) Of course, the anomaly in the joke is the traditional punch line and the joke is "funny" only if the listener gets the punch line by seeing in a flash of insight how a completely new interpretation of the same set of facts can incorporate the anomalous ending.
The longer and more tortuous the garden path of expectation, the "funnier" the punch line when finally delivered. ~ V.S. Ramachandran

Philosophers of science have repeatedly demonstrated that more than one theoretical construction can always be placed upon a given collection of data. ~ Thomas Kuhn

Here is Thomas Kuhn, the philosopher of science, describing the way scientists react when their pet theories are unraveling: "What scientists never do when confronted by even severe and prolonged anomalies," Kuhn wrote, " ... . [is] renounce the paradigm that led them into crisis." Instead, he concluded, "A scientific theory is declared invalid only if an alternate candidate is available to take its place." That is, scientific theories very seldom collapse under the weight of their own inadequacy. They topple only when a new and seemingly better belief turns up to replace it. ~ Kathryn Schulz

We see the world in terms of our theories. ~ Thomas Kuhn

We may ... have to relinquish the notion, explicit or implicit, that changes of paradigm carry scientists and those who learn from them closer and closer to the truth ... The developmental process described in this essay has been a process of evolution from primitive beginnings-a process whose successive stages are characterized by an increasingly detailed and refined understanding of nature. But nothing that has been or will be said makes it a process of evolution toward anything. ~ Thomas Kuhn

Normal science does not aim at novelties of fact or theory and, when successful, finds none. ~ Thomas Kuhn

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

Though the world does not change with a change of paradigm, the scientist afterward works in a different world ... I am convinced that we must learn to make sense of statements that at least resemble these. What occurs during a scientific revolution is not fully reducible to a re-interpretation of individual and stable data. In the first place, the data are not unequivocally stable. ~ Thomas Kuhn

The combination of Bayes and Markov Chain Monte Carlo has been called "arguably the most powerful mechanism ever created for processing data and knowledge."
Almost instantaneously MCMC and Gibbs sampling changed statisticians' entire method of attacking problems. In the words of Thomas Kuhn, it was a paradigm shift. MCMC solved real problems, used computer algorithms instead of theorems, and led statisticians and scientists into a worked where "exact" meant "simulated" and repetitive computer operations replaced mathematical equations. It was a quantum leap in statistics. ~ Sharon Bertsch McGrayne

Each paradigm will be shown to satisfy more or less the criteria that it dictates for itself and to fall short of a few of those dictated by its opponent. ~ Thomas Kuhn

Rather than being an interpreter, the scientist who embraces a new paradigm is like the man wearing inverting lenses. ~ Thomas Kuhn

The transition between competing paradigms cannot be made a step at a time, forced by logic and neutral experience. Like the gestalt switch, it must occur all at once (though not necessarily in an instant) or not at all. ~ Thomas Kuhn

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

Probably, the single most prevalent claim advanced by the proponents of a new paradigm is that they can solve the problems that led the old one to a crisis.. ~ Thomas Kuhn

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

It is, I think, particularly in periods of acknowledged crisis that scientists have turned to philosophical analysis as a device for unlocking the riddles of their field. Scientists have not generally needed or wanted to be philosophers. ~ Thomas Kuhn

Ideas that require people to reorganize their picture of the world provoke hostility. ~ James Gleick

What a man sees depends both upon what he looks at and also upon what his previous visual-conceptual experience has taught him to see. ~ Thomas Kuhn

Crisis alone is not enough. There must also be a basis, though it need be neither rational nor ultimately correct, for faith in the particular candidate chosen. ~ Thomas Kuhn

In science novelty emerges only with difficulty, manifested by resistance, against a background provided by expectation. ~ Thomas Kuhn

All crises begin with the blurring of a paradigm and the consequent loosening of the rules for normal research.. Or finally, the case that will most concern us here, a crisis may end with the emergence of a new candidate for paradigm and with the ensuing battle over its acceptance. ~ Thomas Kuhn

To turn Karl [Popper]'s view on its head, it is precisely the abandonment of critical discourse that marks the transition of science. Once a field has made the transition, critical discourse recurs only at moments of crisis when the bases of the field are again in jeopardy. Only when they must choose between competing theories do scientists behave like philosophers. ~ Thomas Kuhn

Far from being magisterial in its objectivity, science was conditioned by history, society, and the prejudices of scientists. ~ Thomas Kuhn

Groups do not have experiences except insofar as all their members do. And there are no experiences ... that all the members of a scientific community must share in the course of a [scientific] revolution. Revolutions should be described not in terms of group experience but in terms of the varied experiences of individual group members. Indeed, that variety itself turns out to play an essential role in the evolution of scientific knowledge. ~ Thomas Kuhn

Communication across the revolutionary divide is inevitably partial. ~ Thomas Kuhn

Professors of Greek forget or are unaware that Thomas Aquinas, who did not know Greek, was a better interpreter of Aristotle than any of them have proved to be, not only because he was smarter but because he took Aristotle more seriously. ~ Allan Bloom

It was still early, and though the sun's lower limb was just free of the hill, his rays, ungenial and peering, addressed the eye rather than the touch as yet. There was not a human soul near. Sad October and her sadder self seemed the only two existences haunting that lane. ~ Thomas Hardy

I knew I was disoriented, but I was pretty sure intestines were supposed to be inside my body cavity. ~ Ashlan Thomas

We cannot truly love God if we do not love our fellow travelers on this mortal journey. ~ Thomas S. Monson

The increasing technicality of the terminology employed is also a serious difficulty. It has become necessary to learn an extensive vocabulary before a book in even a limited department of science can be consulted with much profit. This change, of course, has its advantages for the initiated, in securing precision and concisement of statement; but it tends to narrow the field in which an investigator can labour, and it cannot fail to become, in the future, a serious impediment to wide inductive generalisations. ~ Thomas George Bonney

God hears no more than the heart speaks; and if the heart be dumb, God will certainly be deaf. ~ Thomas Brooks

A teacher should have maximal authority, and minimal power. ~ Thomas Szasz

A number of governments, such as India and the Philippines, routinely opposed certain initiatives, preferring to elevate either solidarity among developing countries (and their collective desire to fend off criticism as unacceptable intervention) or the principle of state sovereignty over the protection of human beings. ~ Thomas G. Weiss

A daydream is an evasion. ~ Thomas Merton

It's fear, Jack. The man deals with a huge amount of fear.'
Because he got hurt?'
No, not entirely. Fear comes with imagination, it's a penalty, it's the price of imagination. ~ Thomas Harris

The plague of mankind is the fear and rejection of diversity: monotheism, monarchy, monogamy and, in our age, monomedicine. The belief that there is only one right way to live, only one right way to regulate religious, political, sexual, medical affairs is the root cause of the greatest threat to man: members of his own species, bent on ensuring his salvation, security, and sanity. ~ Thomas Szasz

Can you speak to the dead…like your sister?"
Ms. Dupré's body seems to loosen, and her voice gets soft as a feather against your skin. "No, child. But you can say goodbye to someone even after he's gone. You just have to find a way that's right for you. ~ Thomas Fahy

The whole analogy of natural operations furnishes so complete and crushing an argument against the intervention of any but what are termed secondary causes, in the production of all the phenomena of the universe; that, in view of the intimate relations between Man and the rest of the living world; and between the forces exerted by the latter and all other forces, I can see no excuse for doubting that all are co-ordinated terms of Nature's great progression, from the formless to the formed from the inorganic to the organic from blind force to conscious intellect and will. ~ Thomas Huxley

Every cell in us worships God. ~ Thomas Aquinas

The girls were riveted by Georgia's lecture on the importance of sports bras and the dangers of the uni-boob, double busting, slippage, unsightly bulges, and my personal favorite, head lighting. I thought she made valid points and I would never have guessed that bouncing boobs were so problematic. ~ Ashlan Thomas

Don't commit original sin. Try and let her just be. ~ Thomas Pynchon

When the rate of return on capital significantly exceeds the growth rate of the economy (as it did through much of history until the nineteenth century and as is likely to be the case again in the twenty-first century), then it logically follows that inherited wealth grows faster than output and income. People ~ Thomas Piketty

At some time you have to choose to live in the light. ~ Kara Thomas

the American essayist Lewis Thomas on the semicolon: The semicolon tells you that there is still some question about the preceding full sentence; something needs to be added [ . . .] The period [or full stop] tells you that that is that; if you didn't get all the meaning you wanted or expected, anyway you got all the writer intended to parcel out and now you have to move along. But with the semicolon there you get a pleasant feeling of expectancy; there is more to come; read on; it will get clearer. The Medusa and the Snail, 1979 ~ Lynne Truss

This crown of free will is fallen from our head" and "If it be God's purpose that saves then it is not free will. ~ Thomas Watson

Often it is those who are most critical of a "Eurocentric" view of the world who are most Eurocentric when it comes to the evils and failings of the human race. ~ Thomas Sowell

There is a connection between the issue of refugees and the battle against the so-called Islamic State. ~ Thomas De Maiziere

Office of itself does much to equalize politicians. It by no means brings all characters to a level; but it does bring high characters down and low characters up towards a common standard. ~ Thomas B. Macaulay

How sublime to look down on the workhouse of nature, to see her clouds, hail, snow, rain, thunder, all fabricated at our feet! ~ Thomas Jefferson

It was a cruel city, but it was a lovely one; a savage city, yet it had such tenderness; a bitter, harsh, and violent catacomb of stone an steel and tunneled rock, slashed savagely with light, and roaring, fighting a constant ceaseless warfare of men and of machinery; and yet it was so sweetly and so delicately pulsed, as full of warmth, of passion, and of love, as it was full of hate. ~ Thomas Wolfe

Love wakes much and sleeps little and, in sleeping, does not sleep. It faints is not weary; it is restricted in its liberty and is great freedom. It sees reasons to fear and does not fear, but, like an ember or a spark of fire, flames always upward, by the fervor of its love, toward God, and through the special help of grace is delivered from all perils and dangers ~ Thomas A Kempis

A force as of madness in the hands of reason has done all that was ever done in the world. ~ Thomas Carlyle

If living was easy then everyone would be doing it. ~ Steve Thomas

T.J. Miller and Kumail Nanjiani I met when I was in Chicago, learning how to do comedy. ~ Thomas Middleditch

My house is solar powered. I tell Republicans, 'You can hate the subsidies - I hate the subsidies, too - but you can't hate solar panels.' ~ Thomas Massie

Oskar knew people would catch that trolley anyhow. Doors closed, no stops, machine guns on walls - it wouldn't matter. Humans were incurable that way. People would try to get off it, someone's loyal Polish maid with a parcel of sausage. And people would try to get on, some fast-moving athletic young man like Leopold Pfefferberg with a pocketful of diamonds or Occupation zloty or a message in code for the partisans. People responded to any slim chance, even if it was an outside one, its doors locked shut, moving fast between mute walls. ~ Thomas Keneally

I believe that God - if he exists at all - is what we want him to be. The true God is unknowable, and so we dress him up in costumes that make him visible to us. Then we come up with a lot of very silly rules that we attribute to him and tell everyone if they don't follow those rules, they can't be part of the gang. ~ Michael Thomas Ford

It's fascinating for us women to begin looking at our lives in five-year plans. It really does help you keep on track. If that's too hard, start with a two-year plan. ~ Marlo Thomas

Presidents grow up in the White House. The times shape the man. ~ Thomas Friedman

Craft the finest arrow
Forage jungles for straightest shaft
Forge sharpest head of glass
Pluck feathers of the wisest crow
Without the simplest archer and bow
Without a mark that's true
Useless
Craft the finest vessel
Fell the jungle's strongest mast
Build the world's mightiest hull
A flag the crown of all seas you can sew
Without the simplest oarsmen to row
Without a port that's true
Useless ~ Dylan Thomas McCall

What a Babel of voices it was, everybody directing everybody else, and everybody doing everything wrong! ~ Thomas Bailey Aldrich

But they were writers and writers suggest things just to see what happens next. ~ Abigail Thomas

You write who you are. But you also cheat, and youwrite what you want to be. It's embarrasing to be the guy who madethe movie, knowing you're not exactly who you want to be. ~ Paul Thomas Anderson

There is such sweet pain in parting that I could hang forever on thine arms, and look away my life into thine eyes. ~ Thomas Otway

One of the biggest reasons for higher medical costs is that somebody else is paying those costs, whether an insurance company or the government. What is the politicians' answer? To have more costs paid by insurance companies and the government ... [H]aving someone else pay for medical care virtually guarantees that a lot more of it will be used. Nothing would lower costs more than having each patient pay those costs. And nothing is less likely to happen. ~ Thomas Sowell