"What truth is not, according to Kuhn, is an accurate representation of the world as it is in itself. Scientific theories represent a world, but one partially constituted by the cognitive activities of the scientists themselves. This is not a commonsensical view, but it has a distinguished philosophical pedigree, associated most strongly with Kant. The Kantian view is that the truths we can know are truths about a āphenomenalā world that is the joint product of the āthings in themselvesā and the organising, conceptual activity of the human mind. Kuhn, however, is Kant on wheels. Where Kant held that the human contribution to the phenomenal world is invariant, Kuhnās view is that it changes fundamentally across a scientific revolution. This is what he means by his notorious statement that, after a scientific revolution, āthe world changesā. This is neither the trivial claim that scientistsā beliefs about the world change, nor the crazy claim that scientists can change the things in themselves simply by changing their beliefs. It is the claim that the phenomenal world changes because the human contribution to it changes."
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Academics from the United StatesPhilosophers from the United StatesJews from the United StatesPhysicists from the United StatesHistorians of science
Original Language: English
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Peter Lipton, "Kant on Wheels", London Review of Books (19 July 2001)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thomas_Kuhn
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Thomas Kuhn
Thomas Samuel Kuhn (July 18, 1922 ā June 17, 1996) was an American physicist, historian, and philosopher of science and who wrote extensively on the history of science and developed several important notions in the philosophy of science.
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