With Jed Z. Buchwald of the California Institute of Technology and Paul Hoyningen-Huene of the University of Hannover, Germany.
Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, published fifty years ago this year, changed the way that many people look at science. Once, science seemed to be the constant accumulation of “facts,” with each fact a permanent addition to the body of our knowledge. A very different picture emerged from Kuhn’s historical research. Some of our theories, he said, are so fundamental and pervasive (he called these paradigms) that when they changed we had a revolution. In such times the very standards and evidence by which our science was to be measured changed as well as did the meanings of our central terms and concepts. Kuhn himself was trained as a scientist, and many scientists eagerly accepted the new picture of their enterprise. Others were horrified. The debate that ensued spread to every academic department and to the general public as well. These issues are with us still as we decide what science to fund and what to use in meeting societal needs. Our picture of science likewise guides us when we invite the public to understand and to support the best science of our time. It is fitting on the fiftieth anniversary of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions that the MBL, as one of the world’s leading scientific centers, reflects on scientific revolutions to see what we have learned.
