by Thomas Kuhn
Kuhn argues that science doesn't progress through steady accumulation but through paradigm shifts - revolutionary breaks where the entire framework changes. Normal science solves puzzles until anomalies trigger a crisis.
In this collection, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions references 1 other book and is cited by 9 other books.
It draws on The Origin of Species.
It’s picked up by The Mythical Man-Month, Chaos and The Beginning of Infinity and 6 others.
Scroll down to read the exact passages where other authors reference this book and what they say about it.
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is one of those rare academic books that has escaped its discipline entirely, with 'paradigm shift' now part of everyday language. Authors from Frederick Brooks in software engineering to James Gleick in chaos theory to Neil Postman in media criticism all invoke Kuhn's framework to argue that transformative change comes not through gradual progress but through revolutionary breaks.
Nicholas Carr applies it to the digital transition in The Shallows, and Robin Wall Kimmerer challenges it from an indigenous knowledge perspective in Braiding Sweetgrass, showing how the framework itself reflects Western assumptions. Readers value it as a powerful lens for understanding how established thinking resists change, though some find Kuhn's arguments about incommensurability between paradigms philosophically contentious.
The books Kuhn references and why each one mattered to the argument.
Kuhn uses Darwin's Origin as key paradigm shift example.
The exact passages where other authors bring up “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” and what they take from it.
Brooks references Kuhn's paradigm shifts.
Gleick references Kuhn's paradigm shifts for chaos theory.
Deutsch references Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
Challenges Kuhn's Western scientific paradigm by demonstrating how indigenous knowledge systems offer complementary and sometimes superior ecological understanding
Cited in
Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plantsby Robin Wall Kimmerer
Invokes Kuhn's framework of paradigm shifts to argue that the transition from print to digital media represents a fundamental change in how knowledge is structured and transmitted
Applies Kuhn's concept of paradigm shifts to media history, arguing that the transition from print to television constitutes a fundamental epistemological revolution in how truth is established
How ideas flow through the citation network. Ancestors are books this title builds on; descendants are books that build on it.
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