In retrospect: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

Fifty years ago, a short book appeared under the intriguing title The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Its author, Thomas Kuhn (1922–1996), had begun his academic life as a physicist but had migrated to the history and philosophy of science. His main argument in the book — his second work, following a study of the Copernican revolution in astronomy — was that scientific activity unfolds according to a repeating pattern, which we can discern by studying its history