------- Forwarded from H-IDEAS by Ross B. Emmett -------
06/18/96 Prof. Thomas S. Kuhn of MIT, Noted Historian of Science, Dead at
73
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Prof. Thomas S. Kuhn of MIT,
noted historian of science, dead at 73
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For Immediate Release, June 18, 1996
Contact: Robert Di Iorio
Phone: 617-253-1682
CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--Professor Emeritus Thomas S. Kuhn of the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, the internationally known historian and
philosopher who made seminal contributions to understanding how
scientific views are supported and discounted over time, died Monday,
June 17, at his home in Cambridge. He had been ill for the last two
years with cancer of the bronchial tubes and throat. He was 73.
Professor Kuhn, author of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
(1962), an enormously influential work on the nature of scientific
change, was widely celebrated as the central figure in contemporary
thought about how the scientific process evolves.
Earlier this month, for example, Vice President Albert Gore,
delivering the June 7 commencement address at MIT, spoke of the
relationship "between science and technology on the one hand and
humankind and society on the other," and referred to "the great
historian of science, Thomas Kuhn."
Mr. Gore said Professor Kuhn "described the way in which our
understanding of the world properly evolves when faced with a sudden
increase in the amount of information. More precisely, he showed how
well-established theories collapse under the weight of new facts and
observations which cannot be explained, and then accumulate to the point
where the once useful theory is clearly obsolete. As new facts continue
to accumulate, a new threshold is reached at which a new pattern is
suddenly perceptible and a new theory explaining this pattern emerges.
It is an important process, not only at the societal level, but for each
of us as individuals as we try to make sense of the growing mountain of
information placed at our disposal."
More than one million copies of Professor Kuhn's famous 1962 book
have been printed. It exists in more than a dozen languages and
continues to be a basic text in the study of the history of science and
technology.
From 1982 to 1991, when he became an emeritus professor, Dr. Kuhn
held the Laurance S. Rockefeller Professorship in Philosophy. He was the
chair's first holder.
Jed Z. Buchwald, the Bern Dibner Professor of the History of
Science and director of the Dibner Institute for the History of Science
and Technology, said Professor Kuhn "was the most influential historian
and philosopher of science or our time. He instructed and inspired his
students and colleagues at Harvard, Berkeley, Princeton and MIT, as well
as the tens of thousands of scholars and students in his own and other
fields of social science and the humanities who read his works."
Professor Kuhn joined MIT in 1979 from Princeton University where
he had been the M. Taylor Pyne Professor of the History of Science and a
member of the Institute for Advanced Study. At MIT, his work has
centered on cognitive and linguistic processes that bear on the
philosophy of science, including the influence of language on the
development of science.
Born in Cincinnati in 1922, Professor Kuhn studied physics at
Harvard University, where he received the SB (1943), AM (1946) and PhD
(1949). His shift from an interest in solid state physics to the history
of science, was traceable to a "single 'Eureka!' moment in 1947,"
according to a 1991 Scientific American article. Professor Kuhn, the
article says, "was working toward his doctorate in physics at Harvard
University when he was asked to teach some science to undergraduate
humanities majors. Searching for a simple case history that could
illuminate the roots of Newtonian mechanics, Kuhn opened Aristotle's
Physics and was astonished at how 'wrong' it was. How could someone so
brilliant on other topics be so misguided in physics? Kuhn was pondering
this mystery, staring out of the window of his dormitory room . . .when
suddenly Aristotle 'made sense.' Kuhn realized that Aristotle's views of
such basic concepts as motion and matter were totally unlike Newton's.
Aristotle used the word 'motion,' for example, to refer not just to
change in position but to change in general. . . . Understood on its own
terms, Aristole's physics 'wasn't just bad Newton,' Kuhn says; it was
just different."
Professor Kuhn taught at Harvard and at the University of
California, Berkeley, before joining Princeton in 1964. From 1978 to
1979 he was a fellow at the New York Institute for the Humanities.
His honors included the Howard T. Behrman Award for distinguished
achievements in the humanities (1977), the History of Science Society's
George Sarton Medal (1982) and the Society for Social Studies of
Science's John Desmond Bernal Award (1983). He became a Corresponding
Fellow of the British Academy in 1990 and was given honorary degrees by
several universities throughout the world.
He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the Philosophy
of Science Association (president, 1988-90), and the History of Science
Society (president, 1968-70).
Professor Kuhn is survived by his wife, Jehane (Barton) Kuhn; two
daughters, Sarah Kuhn-La Chance of Framingham, Mass., and Elizabeth Kuhn
of Los Angles, and a son, Nathaniel Kuhn of Arlington, Mass.
The service is private. A memorial service will be held at MIT in
the fall.
Contributions in his memory may be made to Hospice of Cambridge,
186 Alewife Brook Parkway, Cambridge, Mass. 02138
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