At a New York cocktail party shortly after the war, a young and insecure physics postgraduate was heard to blurt out to a woman he had met there: 'I just want to know what Truth is!' This was Thomas Kuhn and what he meant was that specific truths such as those of physics mattered less to him than acquiring metaphysical knowledge of the nature of truth. Soon afterwards, he gave up physics, but rather than take up philosophy directly, he approached it by way of the history of science. The work that followed, especially The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, published in 1962 and now with sales of well over a million copies, makes his the most important contribution to the history and philosophy of science of the 20th century.

LRB 19 July 2001 | PDF Download