The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

Important - not only for science

Thomas Kuhn's famous "Structure of Scientific Revolutions", today taken as classical text about the history of Science, is of amazing importance to understanding of the evolution of science.

Kuhn was the first who elucidated the concept of PARADIGM in a relation to science. Paradigm, which we should understand as a pattern of thought - rather than a theory or model, is the pervasive component of almost any human intellectual activity.

Kuhn proves that the evolution in science goes in a revolutionary way, by a process called "paradigm shift" which is usually abrupt and fast. One of the symptoms of the paradigm shift is the process of textbook rewriting - when the change appears to be unavoidable and untenable to the previous paradigm. Kuhn describes Copernican revolution, progress in chemistry, Newtonian physics, quantum mechanics and Einstein's theory or relativity as the key examples illustrating his concept.

Very good book - should not be too difficult to read even to those who did not practice science.

I think, there is also another reason to read it.

When reading it I could not avoid thinking about the another field of activity where we witness revolutions and paradigm shifts: the history of Web. The web grown to today's size, mostly between 1995 to 2000 - in just 6 years it has changed so much - media, knowledge ...

And, when we recall that the HTML was created in 1980, and HTTP in 1989 - we see that initially the old paradigm of communication was still prevailing. Until Netscape came with its killing application - the browser - and made the shift.

And I'm almost sure we are at the footsteps of another paradigm shift - that between today's web of documents and tomorrow's web of data (aka Semantic Web). Kuhn's book teaches us that it is not very easy to predict when will it happen, and that we probably will witness some dramatic changes. It also explains the latency with SW adoption.

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excellent

an excellent reading of an excellent book. wow. the information is timeless because the way humans think and process information are constant. Kuhn has captured the essence of the (complex) process by which we think, test, and alter what we think we know.

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Better than prior reviews led me to believe

I'm not quite sure what the others are talking about.

The reader was adequate. He certainly wasn't superbly engaging, but neither was he so horrible as to make the book unlistenable.

I was quite able to at least get the idea after a single listening, and so I don't think this is a bad format for less strenuous digestion of "Structure." Indeed, if you listen to it many times it might serve to totally replace the book.

Perhaps it is right to say that academic books usually reward slow readings and re-readings while stopping occasionally to consider what's being said or what has been said. The pause and reverse buttons can facilitate some of this with an audio book, but obviously this type of digestion of a work is more suited to reading than to listening. However, for a first time read-through this audio book will more than serve.

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Great book but a hard listen.

Would you consider the audio edition of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions to be better than the print version?

Probably not. I found the audio jam packed with thought provoking and new ideas. I tend to listen to audios on my way to work and this was definitely something I need to sit down, study and carefully read each paragraph.

Were the concepts of this book easy to follow, or were they too technical?

They were complicated concepts that require careful consideration.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

No. Spaced out between thoughts.

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The problem is not with the book

This is one of the more historically important books in philosophy and science. It is too bad the audible version has the reader speak in a way that is quite artificial. This radically reduces the ability to attend to the material in a way that is needed to effectively appreciate Kuhn's work. Let us hope for a new recording where the reader does not rove up and down so drastically with intonation or utilize unnecessary pauses where one could continue the stream of thought. I think this is a fine example of when a classic is lost to the limits of understanding of the folks replicating it. All the same, it is great to have it available at all considering the age of the book. I commend audible for offering it, even in its "hard to listen to" state, and I highly recommend more scientific reads!

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Fascinating

Though there are plenty of big words and parts of it are hard to follow, i still got a lot out of it. Its not the kind of book i could listen to while I worked, I needed to give it full attention.

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Simply read and written and easily understood

This kind of book is why I love audible so much. I never would have read it let alone understand it if it weren't for being on audible. The book is written at such a level that anyone can follow what he's trying to say. I never would have realized that if I were reading the book on my own. (God bless Audible and it's great library of books!).

By listening to the reader (Dennis Holland) it becomes obvious the writer (Kuhn) was writing the essay as to be accessible to all levels of readers (listeners). The reader gave it the simple presentation the author was striving to give.

The two previous books I had been listening to, '13 Things That Don't Make Sense" and "Too Big to Know", both referenced this book extensively so I thought I'd give it a try. Usually, primary sources are hard for me to follow, but this book was not. At its core the book is still a philosophy book and doesn't flow as well as most of the popular science books that I read do.

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Important Book

This is an important book. And it is hard to read on paper. It is even harder to absorb in audio. I think all scientists should read this book. But it takes a lot of focused attention no matter how you do it.

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a classic about scientific thinking

and highly worth listening to.
certainly worthwhile to listen more than one time. Kuhn's concept is one of the basics of modern time scientific approaches.

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The Idea of Progress

This is a very insightful book. Thomas Kuhn delivered an intelligent account about how the sciences develop. More precisely, development by disruption and not by acumulation. Listening to this essay, one can reflect about the idea of progress. It seems that the sciences advance with rejection of old paradigms and creation of new ones, the last don't necessarily linked with the formers. Can we say the same thing about the development of humanities? The narration is fair and the audiobook is from a book edition that have a foreword by the author, in which he answers some criticism the original version received.

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