Portal:Scientific method/Selected biography/2
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Thomas Kuhn (1922-1996) was an American intellectual, most famous for his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (SSR). In SSR, he presented the idea that science does not progress via a linear accumulation of new knowledge, but instead undergoes periodic revolutions which he calls "paradigm shifts", in which the nature of scientific inquiry within a particular field is abruptly transformed. The enormous impact of Kuhn's work can be measured in the changes it brought about in the vocabulary of the philosophy of science: besides "paradigm shift", Kuhn raised the word "paradigm" itself from a term used in certain forms of linguistics to its current broader meaning, coined the term "normal science" to refer to the relatively routine, day-to-day work of scientists working within a paradigm, and was largely responsible for the use of the term "scientific revolutions".
