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The Essential Tension: Selected Studies in Scientific Tradition and Change Revised ed. Edition

by Thomas S. Kuhn (Author)
4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 28 ratings
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"Kuhn has the unmistakable address of a man, who, so far from wanting to score points, is anxious above all else to get at the truth of matters."—Sir Peter Medawar, Nature
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  1. ISBN-10
    0226458067
  2. ISBN-13
    978-0226458069
  3. Edition
    Revised ed.
  4. Publisher
    University of Chicago Press
  5. Publication date
    December 31, 1977
  6. Language
    English
  7. Dimensions
    8.55 x 5.54 x 0.8 inches
  8. Print length
    390 pages
  9. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

 Thomas S. Kuhn (1922–96) was the Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His books include The Essential Tension; Black-Body Theory and the Quantum Discontinuity, 1894–1912; and The Copernican Revolution.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ University of Chicago Press; Revised ed. edition (December 31, 1977)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 390 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0226458067
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0226458069
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.13 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 8.55 x 5.54 x 0.8 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 28 ratings

About the author

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Thomas S. Kuhn

Thomas S. Kuhn

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Thomas Kuhn (1922-1996)was professor emeritus of philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His many books include The Structure of Scientific Revolutions and Black-Body Theory and the Quantum Discontinuity, 1894-1912, both published by the University of Chicago Press.

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4.6 out of 5 stars
4.6 out of 5
28 global ratings

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S.K.Saha
5.0 out of 5 stars Kuhn's world view
Reviewed in the United States on February 18, 2021
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This book is a must read for historians of science.It puts under one cover the most important of Kuhn's writings.
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Book Me
5.0 out of 5 stars Truth in Advertising
Reviewed in the United States on May 5, 2019
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Item arrived as described and on time.
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David Jacobson
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United States on June 25, 2016
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If I could give this 10 stars, I would.
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WhereIsMayLing
5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful digestible essays on Scientific History and Philosophy
Reviewed in the United States on February 2, 2010
Brilliant!
Kuhn is one of very few Scientific Historians, who happens to also be a philosopher. In many ways, he is the father of coming at the three disciplines in this manner. There are so many truly brilliant concepts in this book, it is hard to really point any any one area that would sell this book.

Some of the themes:
1) How is knowledge captured? What exactly is this learning, particularly as relates to new discoveries? What exactly is happening to the individual as he takes in this knowledge.
2) Why is it that lots of innovation tends to happen all at once and then there are periods of considerably less innovation?

He moves the entire discourse away from just rules based learning to far more complex ideas of learning. For example, so many in education would simply think that if you could get a child to parrot rules, this is learning. However, Kuhn puts forth a wonderful argument for a different type of learning. This plays beautifully into the current work done on plasticity of the mind.

Particularly for the used price, this book is cheap for the breadth of knowledge it offers. Kuhns, unlike other philosophers and historians, writes in a manner that extremely digestible. Definitely get this book if you are interested in any of these topics.
10 people found this helpful
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JJ
5.0 out of 5 stars Another beautiful mind
Reviewed in the United States on June 30, 2005
Kuhn's ideas are almost always insightful, sometimes brilliant, though he can be challenging and somewhat dense to read. The last point is an observation rather than a criticism. Unlike some academic writers who use a lot of jargon and unnecessarily big words to sound authoritative, Kuhn is "scholarly" in the best sense -- meticulous about detail and extremely thoughtful in his explanations. There's a lot of great stuff here, just not light reading.

A collection of essays like this is especially nice because Kuhn's writings on a variety of topics can be sampled in manageable chunks of about 10 to 30 pages each. His consistent theme is how communities of scientists come to understand, test, and advance the state of knowledge in their fields of study. What makes the essays so fascinating for me is Kuhn's deft exploration of the social side of how science is done and how it moves forward. And though Kuhn is writing specifically about SCIENCE as a social endeavor, a number of the insights can be readily applied to other areas.

Finally, Kuhn's analyses, insights, and critiques carry added weight because he's not writing about science as an outsider. He started out as a scientist/practitioner and it shows in the crisp way he explains and weaves scientific examples into his writing. Well worth the effort to read!
27 people found this helpful
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Viktor Blasjo
4.0 out of 5 stars Not much new since Structure
Reviewed in the United States on June 19, 2008
Almost all of these articles consist in pretty straightforward elaboration and extrapolation of the ideas in Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions. No fundamentally new ideas are introduced (although there are some trivial adjustments in terminology, which people have made too much fuss about).

"The Function of Measurement in Modern Physical Science." It is an unfortunate textbook dogma to think that theories are confirmed by measurement, or, even worse, that scientific theories are constructed to fit given measurements, for the following reasons. (a) It is ambiguous what constitutes reasonable fit with data; one person's confirmation is another's refutation, as historical examples show (e.g., Ptolemy/Copernicus, etc., p. 185, and Galileo on falling bodies, pp. 193-194). We must conclude that the tables of data in science textbooks serve not to confirm the theories but to define the bounds of reasonable fit. (b) Most theories make very few measurable predictions. Therefore measurements may be indecisive (e.g., caloric and dynamical theories of heat, p. 200) or pertain only to relatively incidental aspects of the theory (e.g., relativity theory, p. 188). (c) To the extent that naive confirmation by measurement has been attempted, it has routinely rejected correct theories (e.g., Dalton on chemical composition, p. 195, Laplace on the speed of sound, p. 196) and it has turned out that "nature itself needs to be forced to yield the appropriate results" (p. 197). (d) "the road from scientific law to scientific measurement can rarely be traveled in the reverse direction" (p. 219). Successful measurements have almost exclusively been achieved where "the quantitative implications of a qualitative theory led the way" (p. 198, countless examples throughout). For these reasons, "only a miniscule fraction of even the best and most creative measurements ... are motivated by a desire to discover new quantitative regularities or to confirm old ones" (p. 187). Instead, the objective of measurement is "to improve the measure of 'reasonable agreement' characteristic of the theory in a given application and ... to open up new areas of application and establish new measurements of 'reasonable agreement' applicable to them. ... this can be fascinating and intensely rewarding work. And there is always the remote possibility that it will pay an additional dividend: something may go wrong." (p. 192). We all know how crucial anomalies can be, but even without them measurements would be valuable with respect to theory choice since "I know of no case in the development of science which exhibits a loss of quantitative accuracy as a consequence of the transition from an earlier to a later theory" (p. 213). By contrast, explanatory power has been abandoned repeatedly, even to the extent of rejecting earlier ideas as unscientific, e.g., Newton's gravity, or Lavoisier's theory which "deprived chemistry of one principal traditional function---the explanation of the qualitative properties of bodies in terms of the particular combination of chemical 'principles' that composed them" (p. 212).

"A Function for Thought Experiments." Since thought experiments do not introduce new empirical data one may think that the only way they can improve a theory is to isolate and resolve inconsistencies inherent in the theory. Kuhn shall argue against this view. His only substantial illustration is a thought experiment of Galileo showing an inconsistency in Aristotle's definition of speed: two things move as fast if they cover the same distance in the same time. Consider an inclined plane. One ball is sliding down the plane, another is dropped vertically from the same height. Call the vertical height H. By Aristotle's definition the dropping ball is faster: it has covered the distance H before the rolling ball has done so. But it is also slower, if H is measured from the bottom of the inclined plane instead of the top. But this does not prove that Aristotle's theory is intrinsically inconsistent, for it would be consistent if there was no accelerated motion. Thus thought experiments can improve theories not only by discovering inherent fallacies but by drawing attention to "previously unassimilated experience" (p. 261).

"Comment on the Relations of Science and Art." This is an extremely simpleminded article concerned only with reiterating foolish prejudices. Let us examine a few of these. "Unlike art, science destroys its past [and does not have museums] to inculcate craftsmanship or enlighten public taste. ... only historians read old scientific works. ... In no area is the contrast between art and science clearer. ... Picasso's success has not relegated Rembrandt's paintings to the storage vaults of art museums" (p. 345). This is ridiculous. What better description could there be of high school and undergraduate science than as a museum of past science intended "to inculcate craftsmanship or enlighten public taste"? And what works are on display in these museums if not the theories of the Rembrandts of science (i.e. Newton et al.)? Further, "Having seen Matisse's Odalisque, one may regard Ingres' with new eyes but one does not stop looking. Both can therefore be museum pieces as two solutions to a scientist's puzzle cannot." (p. 347). But they can in science too, and they are: Matisse/Ingres can be replaced by Newton/Einstein, geocentric/heliocetric, etc. Finally: "For the scientist ... the solved technical puzzle is the goal, and the aesthetic is a tool for its attainment." (p. 343). Since this is dogmatically stated without argument it is hard to argue against it on the basis of Kuhn's text, but I will try. If scientists were in their essence puzzle solvers one would expect them to be fond of chess, crossword puzzles, detective novels, etc. But instead they like music, as Kuhn points out elsewhere: "Many mathematicians and theoretical physicists have been passionately interested in and involved with music, some having had great difficulty choosing between a scientific and a musical career." (p. 64). Music is not puzzle solving but a pursuit of beauty within a structured framework.
8 people found this helpful
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AMFAW
5.0 out of 5 stars A comment on Magellan's comments
Reviewed in the United States on June 6, 2006
In the last few lines of Magellan's "A few comments on the evolution of the philosophy", Thomas Kuhn was strongly criticized. This criticism perhaps originates from the same misunderstanding of human nature that produced Confusianism and Maxism.

What is brave about Kuhn is that he dared to point out the weakness of mankind. Indeed scientists eventually accept new ideas and theories because they are closer to truth as revealed by the new experimental observations and findings. But this paradigm shift can indeed be painfully long as people first try to exhaust all the means to rescue the old paradigm. Scientists should be trained to have the ethnics of merely pursuing truth and only truth. However, as human beings (shame on them), some scientists care more about their reputation and survival than about what is true. When the majority of a community is like so, the paradigm shift indeed begins as an external process, i.e., the shift is forced upon and not voluntary.
4 people found this helpful
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W.Mann
3.0 out of 5 stars Three Stars
Reviewed in the United States on May 30, 2017
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The revolution must not die.
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Top reviews from other countries

saadiya riaz
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 9, 2018
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All books come in excellent condition although that are used content just as expected
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