Reconstructing Scientific Revolutions: Thomas S. Kuhn's Philosophy of Science

By Paul Hoyningen-Huene

Book Overview

Few philosophers of science have influenced as many readers as Thomas S. Kuhn. Yet no comprehensive study of his ideas has existed--until now. In this volume, Paul Hoyningen-Huene examines Kuhn's work over four decades, from the days before The Structure of Scientific Revolutions to the present, and puts Kuhn's philosophical development in a historical framework.

Scholars from disciplines as diverse as political science and art history have offered widely differing interpretations of Kuhn's ideas, appropriating his notions of paradigm shifts and revolutions to fit their own theories, however imperfectly. Hoyningen-Huene does not merely offer another interpretation--he brings Kuhn's work into focus with rigorous philosophical analysis. Through extended discussions with Kuhn and an encyclopedic reading of his work, Hoyningen-Huene looks at the problems and justifications of his claims and determines how his theories might be expanded. Most significantly, he discovers that The Structure of Scientific Revolutions can be understood only with reference to the historiographic foundation of Kuhn's philosophy.

Discussing the concepts of paradigms, paradigm shifts, normal science, and scientific revolutions, Hoyningen-Huene traces their evolution to Kuhn's experience as a historian of contemporary science. From here, Hoyningen-Huene examines Kuhn's well-known thesis that scientists on opposite sides of a revolutionary divide "work in different worlds," explaining Kuhn's notion of a world-change during a scientific revolution. He even considers Kuhn's most controversial claims--his attack on the distinction between the contexts of discovery and justification and his notion of incommensurability--addressing both criticisms and defenses of these ideas.

Destined to become the authoritative philosophical study of Kuhn's work, Reconstructing Scientific Revolutions both enriches our understanding of Kuhn and provides powerful interpretive tools for bridging Continental and Anglo-American philosophical traditions.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0226355519
• ISBN13: 9780226355511
• Release Date: May 1993
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Length: 330 Pages
• Weight: 1.04 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Excellent analysis of the difficult details of Kuhn's work.

The author shows that he masters the subject with insight and is able to reconstruct either chronologically or by problems, thesis, objections and possible interpretations, the philosophical work of T.S.Kuhn. He choices to present the reconstruction from a caritative point of view, wich allows him to concentrate into the internal problems of Kuhn's theory of science. In Part I he locates Kuhn's work in the context of the Historiography of Science. Part II concentrates in the problem of scientific knowledge and Kuhn's hard and highly misunderstood thesis about "the construction of the world". Part III develops the subject of the dynamic of scientific knowledge and Kuhn's point of view about scientific progress. It is particulary helpfull to have at hand Kuhn's books while reading Hoyningen-Huene's book because he has a gift for suitable quotation.