Thomas Kuhn's Quotes

The crises of our time, it becomes increasingly clear, are the necessary impetus for the revolution now under way. And once we understand nature's transformative powers, we see that it is our powerful ally, not a force to feared our subdued.

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

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

The historian of science may be tempted to exclaim that when paradigms change, the world itself changes with them.

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.

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.

Under normal conditions the research scientist is not an innovator but a solver of puzzles, and the puzzles upon which he concentrates are just those which he believes can be both stated and solved within the existing scientific tradition.