The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

Kuhn’s account of how science actually changes, written against the view that it accumulates steadily toward truth. Normal science, he argues, is puzzle-solving inside a paradigm — a shared set of exemplars, instruments and assumptions that tells practitioners which problems count and what an answer looks like. Anomalies pile up, a crisis follows, and the field converts to a new paradigm in a discontinuous shift rather than by weighing evidence, because the competing paradigms are incommensurable: they do not agree on what the problems or the relevant observations are. The book put “paradigm shift” and “normal science” into general use and is one of the most cited academic works of the twentieth century; its relativist implications Kuhn spent later years qualifying.

Why it’s on the list: McCord lists it in Science, Technology, and Epistemology after Popper and E. O. Wilson and before Campbell’s evolutionary epistemology — the section that works through how knowledge is actually produced and revised, with Kuhn standing as the historical counterweight to Popper’s falsificationism.

Where I saw it: Brendan McCord’s Philosopher-Entrepreneur Reading List, in the Knowledge, Culture, and Society part, section Science, Technology, and Epistemology — a structured curriculum shared on X on March 9, 2026 and saved to Kyle’s Apple Note “Books To Read”. The full 211-entry transcription is on The Philosopher-Entrepreneur Reading List.

Connections

• Epistemology — the field the book unsettled.
• Knowledge — the thing whose growth it re-describes.
• Progress — the cumulative account of science the book argues against.
• The Philosopher-Entrepreneur Reading List — the curriculum this came from.