Why am I passionate about this?
I almost became a scientist. But something about my undergraduate physics labs—could it be that none of my measurements came out right?—didn't quite grab me, and I found myself, by the time I earned my degree, an observer of science instead. I was just as fascinated with fundamental particles, the origin of life, and artificial intelligence as before, but now I was doing the philosophy, history, and sociology of science. You might even call it the science of science. So perhaps I became a scientist after all, but one intent on the question of how science works and why it works so well.
Michael's book list on show how science really works
Why did Michael love this book?
This is the book that changed my thinking about science—but I had to read it twice before I understood what was really going on. It’s not the revolutions that are radical, but ordinary science, which motivates scientists to undertake long, arduous, risky programs of experimentation or observation by providing a guarantee that they cannot possibly fail.
The guarantee comes in the form of the famous Kuhnian “paradigm,” which is a blueprint for doing scientific research that ordinary scientists are not permitted to question. But paradigms can fail, and so the guarantee that motivates scientists is a piece of fakery. Science, in effect, creates a social institution that dupes scientists into doing what’s good for scientific discovery but maybe not so good for the individual scientist. It’s an astonishing idea.
15 authors picked The Structure of Scientific Revolutions as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
A good book may have the power to change the way we see the world, but a great book actually becomes part of our daily consciousness, pervading our thinking to the point that we take it for granted, and we forget how provocative and challenging its ideas once were-and still are. "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" is that kind of book. When it was first published in 1962, it was a landmark event in the history and philosophy of science. And fifty years later, it still has many lessons to teach. With "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions", Kuhn challenged long-standing…