The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

Mark Zuckerberg Founder/FacebookIt's a history of science book that explores the question of whether science and technology make consistent forward progress or whether progress comes in bursts related to other social forces. I tend to think that science is a consistent force for good in the world. I think we'd all be better off if we invested more in science and acted on the results of research. I'm excited to explore this theme further. (Source)

Tim O'Reilly Founder/O'Reilly MediaThe Structure of Scientific Revolutions, by Thomas Kuhn. Kuhn introduced the term "paradigm shift" to describe the changeover from Ptolemaic to Copernican astronomy. But the book is far more than a classic in the history of science. It's also a book that emphasizes how what we already believe shapes what we see, what we allow ourselves to think. I've always tried to separate seeing itself from the stories I tell myself about what I see. Pattern recognition is impeded if you are trying to overlay an existing pattern on the facts rather than letting the facts sit quietly until they tell their... (Source)

Danielle Morrill Co-founder/MattermarkRecommends this book

Dan Sullivan Recommends this book

Andra Zaharia I’ve gone through quite a few experiences brought on or shaped by what I’ve learned from books. A particularly unexpected one happened in college when our public relations teacher asked us to read a book called The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn. As a humanities student, you can imagine that I wasn’t thrilled I’d have to read a book on science, but what followed blew my mind at the time. In the book, Kuhn argues that human knowledge does not accumulate incrementally, but increases in leaps, through paradigm shifts which are brought on by crises and scientific... (Source)

Louise Foxcroft Kuhn was a famous American philosopher of science, and in this book he was writing about paradigm shifts: how the scientific community, and therefore eventually all of us, change our world views. He looks at where those revisionary revolutions in thought come from. Instead of it being a straightforward ladder of progress, you never know where knowledge is going to come from. It can come from left field, and the book is full of examples of that sort of paradigm shift. (Source)