A Study Of T.S. Kuhn's "Copernican Revolution"

T.S.Kuhn was a historian of science before he entered into the field of philosophy of science.As the representative philosopher of the historicist school,Kuhn's philosophy of science is the philosophy of history firstly.His study of the Copernican revolution constituted the starting point of his philosophy of science.However,as Kuhn's most important works of history of science,The Copernican Revolution has always been neglected for researchers in the meaning of epistemology.The paper seeks to fill up that neglected aspect of The Copernican Revolution.It starts the analysis from four aspects to The Copernican Revolution.Through the use of methods of history study happened,Chapterâ… restores out Kuhn's transition process from a physicist to a historian of science, as well as his thoughts and knowledge preparing for writing The Copernican Revolution.According with the way that Kuhn dealing with the period of history of the Copernican revolution, chapterâ…¡introduces Kuhn's work through reconstructing the story from three aspects:the astronomy,the history of thoughts and the history of science.Chapterâ…¢points out the effect that Kuhn accepted from Koyre's historiography program for writing The Copernican Revolution,and analyses Kuhn' s methodology of the studies of the history of science comparing with The Galileo Research.Chapterâ…£refines Kuhn's conception of "conceptual scheme" in The Copernican Revolution and summarizes the functions,characteristics and changes of the conception. Based on the above,the paper concludes,to a large extent, the points coming from The Copernican Revolution were supporting all the basic views of Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.Viewing at micro-point,the initial form of the well-known concepts of "Paradigm" and "incommensurability" in the latter,has already appeared in the former as "conceptual scheme" and "incompatibility" to the infant.Viewing at macro-point,the former interpretation of the vivid story of the history of science has been already connected by mature theory in the latter.