Last Writings of Thomas S. Kuhn

Thomas S. Kuhn (1922–96) was an American philosopher and the Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. One of the most influential philosophers of science of the twentieth century, he wrote many books, including The Copernican Revolution, The Essential Tension, and Black-Body Theory and the Quantum Discontinuity, 1894–1912, all also published by the University of Chicago Press. Bojana Mladenović is professor of philosophy at Williams College. She is the author of Kuhn’s Legacy: Epistemology, Metaphilosophy, and Pragmatism.

• Editor’s IntroductionEditor’s NoteThomas S. Kuhn: Scientific Knowledge as Historical ProductAbstract for “The Presence of Past Science (The Shearman Memorial Lectures)”Thomas S. Kuhn: The Presence of Past Science (The Shearman Memorial Lectures)Lecture I: Regaining the PastLecture II: Portraying the PastLecture III: Embodying the PastAbstract for The Plurality of Worlds: An Evolutionary Theory of Scientific DevelopmentThomas S. Kuhn: The Plurality of Worlds: An Evolutionary Theory of Scientific DevelopmentAcknowledgmentsPart I: The ProblemChapter 1: Scientific Knowledge as Historical ProductChapter 2: Breaking into the PastChapter 3: Taxonomy and IncommensurabilityPart II: A World of KindsChapter 4: Biological Prerequisites to Linguistic Description: Track and SituationsChapter 5: Natural Kinds: How Their Names MeanChapter 6: Practices, Theories, and Artefactual KindsBibliographyEditor’s AcknowledgmentsNotesIndex

“A fascinating sketch of Kuhn’s mature thought. . . . The proponents of competing paradigms may practice their trades in different worlds, but, as Kuhn was at pains to stress in his last writings, sometimes those worlds are closer than we think.”