Kuhn vs Popper - About James H. Collier

FURTHER READINGKuhn and Popper related to their texts ratherdifferently, but both wrote with a surface claritythat masked considerable ambiguity, inconsistencyand shifts in position over time.Kuhn’s first book, The Copernican Revolution(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957), was awork of synthetic history that struck readers at thetime as a decent textbook, despite its lack of originalscholarship. Kuhn’s subsequent success has led to aretrospective upgrading of its significance. Kuhn’simmense public reputation rests almost entirelyon his second book, The Structure of ScientificRevolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,1962). Most commentators rely on the secondedition (1970), where Kuhn begins a bewilderingtendency to retreat from any radical-soundingclaims. Kuhn’s only subsequent monograph was atechnically accomplished but intellectuallyunadventurous account of the origins of quantummechanics: Black Body Radiation and QuantumDiscontinuity: 1894–1912 (Oxford: Clarendon Press,216