Thomas Kuhn, 73; Devised Science Paradigm
Lawrence Van Gelder www.nytimes.com lawrence-van-gelder
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Thomas S. Kuhn, whose theory of scientific revolution became a profoundly influential landmark of 20th-century intellectual history, died on Monday at his home in Cambridge, Mass. He was 73.

Robert DiIorio, associate director of the news office at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said the scholar, who held the title of professor emeritus at M.I.T., had been ill with cancer in recent years.

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions," was conceived while Professor Kuhn was a graduate student in theoretical physics and published as a monograph in the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science before the University of Chicago Press issued it as a 180-page book in 1962. The work punctured the widely held notion that scientific change was a strictly rational process.

Professor's Kuhn's treatise influenced not only scientists but also economists, historians, sociologists and philosophers, touching off considerable debate. It has sold about one million copies in 16 languages and remains required reading in many basic courses in the history and philosophy of science.

Dr. Kuhn, a professor of philosophy and history of science at M.I.T. from 1979 to 1983 and the Laurence S. Rockefeller Professor of Philosophy there from 1983 until 1991, was the author or co-author of five books and scores of articles on the philosophy and history of science. But Dr. Kuhn remained best known for "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions."

His thesis was that science was not a steady, cumulative acquisition of knowledge. Instead, he wrote, it is "a series of peaceful interludes punctuated by intellectually violent revolutions." And in those revolutions, he wrote, "one conceptual world view is replaced by another."

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