US historian
and philosopher of science, who showed that social and cultural conditions
affect the directions of science. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
1962 argued that even scientific knowledge is relative, dependent on the
paradigm (theoretical framework) that dominates a scientific field at the
time.
Such paradigms (for example, Darwinism and Newtonian theory) are so dominant
that they are uncritically accepted as true, until a 'scientific revolution'
creates a new orthodoxy. Kuhn's ideas have also influenced ideas in the
social sciences. |