23 Quotes by Thomas S. Kuhn

The answers you get depend on the questions you ask.

In these and other respects a discussion of puzzles and rules illuminates the nature of normal scientific practice. Yet, in another way, that illumination may be significantly misleading. Though there obviously are rules to which all the practitioners of a scientific specialty adhere at a given time, those rules may not by themselves specify all that the practice of those specialists has in common.

As in political revolutions, so in paradigm choice – there is no standard higher than the assent of the relevant community. To discover how scientific revolutions are effected, we shall therefore have to examine not only the impact of nature and of logic, but also the techniques of persuasive argumentation effective within the quite special groups that constitute the community of scientists.

El fracaso de las reglas existentes es el preludio de la búsqueda de otras nuevas.

En la ciencia ocurre como en las manufacturas: el cambio de herramientas es una extravagancia que se reserva para las ocasiones que lo exigen. El significado de las crisis es que ofrecen un indicio de que ha llegado el momento de cambiar de herramientas.

La historia sugiere que el camino hacia un firme consenso en la investigación es extraordinariamente arduo.

When reading the works of an important thinker, look first for the apparent absurdities in the text and ask yourself how a sensible person could have written them.

Under normal conditions the research scientist is not an innovator but a solver of puzzles, and the puzzles upon which he concentrates are just those which he believes can be both stated and solved within the existing scientific tradition.

Si la ciencia es la constelación de hechos, teorías y medios recogidos en los textos al uso, entonces los científicos son las personas que, con éxito o sin él, han intentado aportar un elemento u otro de esa constelación concreta.