The Structure of Scientific Revolutions Characters

Kuhn, the book’s author and narrator, was a historian and philosopher of science fascinated by epistemology (or, the study of knowledge). His overarching argument in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is that science develops and… read analysis of Thomas Kuhn

Aristotle was an ancient Greek philosopher who lived and worked in the 4th century B.C.E. His writing impacted innumerable fields of study, from ethics to zoology, but Kuhn is most interested in Aristotle’s work on… read analysis of Aristotle

After centuries of belief in the geocentric universe (in which the sun rotated around Earth), Polish astronomer Copernicus suggested that the reverse was true. In his famous 1543 treatise De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On… read analysis of Nicolaus Copernicus

Galileo was a 16th-century Italian scientist who made important contributions to both astronomy and physics. In astronomy, he helped prove and popularize Copernicus’s heliocentric model. In physics, Galileo pioneered new theories about the pendulum… read analysis of Galileo Galilei

Though he is best known for his contributions to physics, 17th-century British scientist Isaac Newton also dabbled in astronomy, theology, and other fields of study. Kuhn is largely interested in Newton’s study of gravity, which… read analysis of Isaac Newton

Boyle was a chemist who lived and worked in England and Ireland during the late 17th century. He was a believer in Descartes’s model of the world, and he used this paradigm to arrive… read analysis of Robert Boyle

Lavoisier was an 18th-century French chemist. Toward the end of the 1700s, scientists across Europe were trying to understand combustion (how fire worked). Lavoisier, a prominent French philosopher and court administrator, had initially subscribed to… read analysis of Antoine Lavoisier

Dalton was an English scientist who lived during the 18th and 19th centuries. Though he initially started out as a meteorologist, Dalton ultimately became famous for his law of partial pressures, which viewed air pressure… read analysis of John Dalton

Einstein, a physicist famous for revolutionizing his field, was born in Germany but immigrated to the U.S. after Hitler came into power in 1933. His theory of relativity, which focused largely on the speed of… read analysis of Albert Einstein