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The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

Thomas Kuhn·1962·English

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The book that introduced 'paradigm shift' into everyday language. Kuhn argues that science does not advance by accumulation but by revolution: long periods of normal puzzle-solving within an accepted framework, then sudden rupture when anomalies accumulate until the framework collapses. The new paradigm is not simply truer — it is incommensurable with the old.

Led by a new paradigm, scientists adopt new instruments and look in new places. Even more important, during revolutions scientists see new and different things when looking with familiar instruments in places they have looked before. It is as if the professional community had been suddenly transported to another planet where familiar objects are seen in a different light.

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