American philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn dies
Thomas Kuhn was an American physicist, historian and philosopher of science whose controversial 1962 book “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” was influential in both academic and popular circles. He claimed scientific fields undergo periodic "paradigm shifts" rather than progressing in a solely linear and continuous way, that the notion of scientific truth cannot be established solely by objective criteria but is defined by a consensus of a scientific community, and that competing paradigms are frequently incommensurable; that is, they are competing and irreconcilable accounts of reality.