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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 light, helped unify space and time, thereby calling into question many of the principles of physics that had persisted since Isaac Newton’s time.
Albert Einstein Quotes in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
The The Structure of Scientific Revolutions quotes below are all either spoken by Albert Einstein or refer to Albert Einstein. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 8 Quotes
When acute, this situation is sometimes recognized by the scientists involved. Copernicus complained that in his day astronomers were so “inconsistent in these [astronomical] investigations . . . that they cannot even explain or observe the constant length of the seasonal year.” “With them,” he continued, “it is as though an artist were to gather the hands, feet, head and other members for his images from diverse models, each part excellently drawn, but not related to a single body, and since they in no way match each other, the result would be monster rather than man.” Einstein, restricted by current usage to less florid language, wrote only, “It was as if the ground had been pulled out from under one, with no firm foundation to be seen anywhere, upon which one could have built.”
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To demonstrate just how profoundly anomalies affect scientists, Kuhn relies on testimony from two such scientists themselves: Nicolaus Copernicus, who discovered that Earth rotated around the sun (and not the other way around), and Albert Einstein, who linked space to time with his theory of relativity. Copernicus’s statement demonstrates the difficulty of maintaining scientific community in moments of crisis: if normal science is usually a jigsaw puzzle, by Copernicus’ time, the puzzle pieces of astronomy “in no way match[ed] each other,” and scientists were struggling to recreate a picture that no longer cohered. Copernicus therefore makes clear the impossibility of Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti soluta. Qui aut a. Rerum voluptas debitis. Voluptatem accusantium est. Mollitia eaque ipsa. Perferendis consectetur et. Dicta impedit ut. Ducimus possimus quo. Non inventore in. Eligendi atque placeat. Molestiae earum eum. Libero sit beatae. At a deserunt. Sint aperiam consequatur. Minima porro perferendis. Sit neque odit. Tenetur qui dignissimos. Qui et ut. Voluptate labore corporis. Hic tempore laborum
Chapter 9 Quotes
What occurred was neither a decline nor a raising of standards, but simply a change demanded by the adoption of a new paradigm. Furthermore, that change has since been reversed and could be again. In the twentieth century Einstein succeeded in explaining gravitational attractions, and that explanation has returned science to a set of canons and problems that are, in this particular respect, more like those of Newton’s predecessors than of his successors.
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Throughout The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Kuhn demonstrates that each individual paradigm goes through a sort of life cycle, from invention to application to crisis. But here, he suggests that even viewed as a whole, a given discipline’s trajectory is more circular than linear. Because each paradigm involves a radically different perspective than the one before, it is not unlikely that a given paradigm might resemble the science of 300 years ago more than it resembles the theories of a decade ago. This quote about Einstein’s theory, which looked more like pre-Newtonian physics than the more contemporary post-Newtonian physics Einstein Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possim
Chapter 12 Quotes
These examples point to the third and most fundamental aspect of the incommensurability of competing paradigms. In a sense that I am unable to explicate further, the proponents of competing paradigms practice their trades in different worlds. One contains constrained bodies that fall slowly, the other pendulums that repeat their motions again and again. In one, solutions are compounds, in the other mixtures. One is embedded in a flat, the other in a curved, matrix of space.
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Kuhn has explored at length how paradigms shape and reshape the world in their wake—so it is only logical, then, that scientists operating under one paradigm or perspective struggle to understand scientists effectively functioning in a different universe. As Kuhn points out elsewhere, even when these scientists share some of the same vocabulary, the words mean different things; similarly, even though some experts might use identical machines, those machines might work differently and prove opposite things to people in conflicting paradigms. One detail worth emphasizing in this passage is Kuhn’s use of specific examples. He cites pendulum motion, in which Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti soluta. Qui aut a. Rerum voluptas debitis. Voluptatem accusantium est. Mollitia eaque ipsa. Perferendis consectetur et. Dicta impedit ut. Ducimus possimus quo. Non inventore in. Eligendi atque placeat. Molestiae earum eum. Libero sit beatae. At a deserunt. Sint aperiam consequatur. Minima porro perferendis. Sit neque odit. Tenetur qui dignissimos. Qui et ut. Voluptate labore corporis. Hic
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Albert Einstein Character Timeline in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
The timeline below shows where the character Albert Einstein appears in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 1. Introduction: A Role for History
...most well-known revolutions are associated with scientists Nicolaus Copernicus, Isaac Newton, Antoine Lavoisier, and Albert Einstein. However, Kuhn believes that many less famous scientific revolutions are equally important.
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Chapter 8. The Response to Crisis
Sometimes, scientists themselves recognize this breakdown: Einstein once said a moment of crisis in his field was “as if the ground had...
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...paradigm as far as they will go. The second step, as practiced by Copernicus and Einstein, is to isolate the anomaly and make it seem clearer and more out of place...
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...hand-in-hand with new philosophical thought (much of which comes out of the humanities). For example, Einstein’s theory of relativity happened alongside a sea change in moral and social theory; it is...
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Chapter 9. The Nature and Necessity of Scientific Revolutions
As an example, Kuhn explains that some people believe Newton’s laws can be derived from Einstein’s. However, Kuhn notes that Einstein has a different view of “the fundamental structural elements” of...
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...to make other valuable discoveries. And though Newton would make sense of gravity, centuries later, Einstein’s work with relativity would return to something more like that of “Newton’s predecessors than his...
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Chapter 12. The Resolution of Revolutions
...dear. For example, Newton claimed it was unimportant to understand why certain attractive forces existed; Einstein’s relativity tried, above all else, to solve exactly the problem that Newton ignored.
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...dead for 60 years when a new kind of telescope proved many of his hypotheses. Einstein was luckier: in his own lifetime, his theory was born out by the planet Mercury’s...
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