A REVOLUTIONARY ACCOUNT OF SCIENCE
Scientific revolutions are inaugurated by a growing sense... that an existing paradigm has ceased to function adequately in the exploration of an aspect of nature to which that paradigm itself had previously led the way.
The Folio edition’s newly commissioned foreword offers a lively personal impression of the book. Marcus du Sautoy, both a practising mathematician and an eminent science communicator, discusses how its ideas have informed his own work, and how they have been borne out in the advances of recent decades. The book also retains philosopher of science Ian Hacking’s essay from the 2012 edition, which deals deftly with the challenges to Kuhn’s theories during the book’s first half-century in print.
Both writers agree that after selling more than a million copies and becoming one of the most cited works of all time, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is unlikely to lose its status as a milestone in science writing. It’s a sentiment best expressed in the scientific journal Nature, on the book’s 50th anniversary: ‘We need hardly agree with each of Kuhn’s propositions to enjoy – and benefit from – this classic book.’
‘The Structure of Scientific Revolutions did a gestalt flip on just about every assumption about the who, how, and what of scientific progress... The book still vibrates our culture’s walls like a trumpet call.’
- Chronicle of Higher Education