The Structure of Scientific Revolutions - Influence

Influence

In 1987, Kuhn's work was reported to be the twentieth-century book most frequently cited in the period 1976-83 in the Arts and the Humanities and the Times Literary Supplement labeled it one of "The Hundred Most Influential Books Since the Second World War." The book's basic concepts have been adopted and co-opted by a variety of fields and disciplines beyond those encompassing the history and philosophy of science.

SSR is viewed by postmodern and post-structuralist thinkers as having called into question the enterprise of science by demonstrating that scientific knowledge is dependent on the culture and historical circumstances of groups of scientists rather than on their adherence to a specific, definable method. In this regard, Kuhn is considered a precursor to the more radical thinking of Paul Feyerabend. Kuhn's work has also been regarded as blurring the demarcation between scientific and non-scientific enterprises, because it describes the mechanism of scientific progress without invoking any idealized scientific method that is capable of distinguishing science from non-science. In the years following the publication of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, debate raged with adherents of Karl Popper's doctrine of falsificationism, such as Imre Lakatos.

On the one hand, logical positivists and many scientists have criticized Kuhn's "humanizing" of the scientific process for going too far, while the postmodernists, together with Feyerabend, have criticized Kuhn for not going far enough. SSR has also been embraced by creationists who see creationism as an incommensurate worldview in contrast to naturalism while holding science as a valuable tool. It was also in tune with a national change in attitudes towards science in the United States at the time of the book's publication, influenced by the Cold War confrontation with the Soviet Union, beginning with the launching of the space satellite Sputnik in 1957. (Rachel Carson's Silent Spring was also published in 1962).

The changes that occur in politics, society and business are often expressed in Kuhnian terms, however poor their parallel with the practice of science may seem to scientists and historians of science. The terms "paradigm" and "paradigm shift" have become such notorious clichés and buzzwords that they are viewed as effectively devoid of content. Misused and overused to the point of becoming meaningless, their use in these contexts rarely has any firm foundation in Kuhn's original definitions.