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From Student of Physics to Historian of Science: T.S. Kuhn’s Education and Early Career, 1940–1958

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Abstract

I first show that Kuhn came to have doubts about physics soon after entering college but did not make up his mind to leave the discipline until 1947–1948 when a close association with Harvard’s President James B. Conant convinced him of the desirability of an alternative career in the history of science. I go on to maintain that it was realistic for Kuhn to prepare for such a career in essentially autodidactic ways both because he enjoyed Conant’s patronage and because he could expect that his credentials in physics would be an asset in this relatively young interdisciplinary specialty. I then suggest that it was through his work as a teacher, researcher, and journeyman gatekeeper in the history of science that Kuhn gradually came to identify with the field. Finally, I argue that his training in physics, his teaching of general-education courses, and his hopes of influencing current philosophy of science helped shape his early practice as a historian of science. By way of epilogue, I briefly consider Kuhn’s path from his tenuring at Berkeley in 1958 to the appearance of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions in 1962.

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Notes

  1. I should briefly characterize my own relationship with Kuhn. I became aware of him in 1960 when, as a student in Oxford’s new diploma program in the history and philosophy of science, I read The Copernican Revolution (1957). The following year, impressed by the book’s nice blend of technical exposition and historical narrative, I went to Berkeley with plans to earn my Ph.D. under Kuhn’s direction. This was a busy time for him because, unbeknownst to me, he was winding up Structure and laying the groundwork for the Sources for History of Quantum Physics (SHQP) project. During 1961–1962, nonetheless, we met from time to time for advising, and I took his graduate courses on Greek mathematics and its early modern reception and on thermodynamics in the late nineteenth century. Then his path diverged from mine. We corresponded a couple of times during his SHQP year in Copenhagen. Not long after his return from Europe, he accepted a job offer from Princeton University and, by mutual agreement, I became Roger Hahn’s advisee. After Kuhn left Berkeley, our personal contacts were limited to occasional chats at history-of-science meetings. Hence, I come to the subject of my paper primarily out of curiosity about the life of an important mentor.

  2. His father was able to assign a relatively minor role to financial considerations when advising his son primarily because his wife, Minette Stroock Kuhn, came from a wealthy family; Roger Kuhn, personal communication, February 3, 1998.

  3. It is quite possible that Kuhn’s application to Harvard University would illuminate the reasons for and intensity of his commitment to physics during his last year at Taft. However, Harvard will not release it (or his transcript) until eighty years after his graduation, that is, 2023.

  4. Kuhn’s uncle was Adolph Oko (1883–1944), their father’s sister’s second husband, who published several books, including a major Spinoza bibliography; Roger Kuhn, personal communications, October 13 and 16, 1997.

  5. Kuhn wanted a Ph.D. in physics because it would give him a certain authority within the history of science; Roger Kuhn, personal communication, October 7, 1997.

  6. In the judgment of Nobel Laureate Philip Anderson, another of J.H. Van Vleck’s Ph.D. students, “[Kuhn’s] thesis was a minor gem, a clean, exact treatment of some quite hard maths; but it could have put him off ‘stamp-collecting’ if he was really ambitious”; Anderson, personal communication, December 11, 1996.

  7. According to Nash, Conant selected them because they were the only young persons with continuing appointments at Harvard who had been closely associated with the course; Nash, personal communication, October 4, 1997.

  8. Their daughter Sarah was born in June 1952, and their daughter Elizabeth was born in April 1954.

  9. Levin was a Senior Fellow of the Society of Fellows when Kuhn was selected for membership and also was a member of the Committee on General Education when Kuhn was appointed as an Instructor; moreover, he followed Kuhn in giving the Lowell Lectures for 1952; see Directory of American Scholars (3rd ed. 1957), p. 443. However, his level of irritation suggests that he had served as a gatekeeper in many other situations in which Kuhn was being scrutinized.

  10. Kuhn taught four courses at Berkeley during the academic year 1956–1957, two for the History Department in the fall semester, History 103: Proseminar in the History of Science (enrollment: 4) and History 120: The Rise of Scientific Cosmology from Aristotle to Newton (enrollment: 25), and two for the Philosophy Department in the spring semester, Philosophy 127: Matter and Energy from Dalton to Einstein (enrollment: 12) and Philosophy 220: Relations of Science and Philosophy since Bacon and Descartes (enrollment: 8). The only one of these four courses that may have been completely new was History 103; William Roberts, personal communications, October 28 and 31, 1997.

  11. During 1957–1958, Kuhn taught History 105A-B: History of Scientific Thought and Technique (Antiquity to Bohr) (enrollment: 21, 22), Philosophy 127A-B: Problems in the Development of Physical Science (enrollment: 9, 9), and in succession during the fall and spring semesters History 204: Seminar in the History of Science (enrollment: 2) and Philosophy 220: Seminar in the Relations of Science and Philosophy (enrollment: 6); William Roberts, personal communications, October 28 and 31, 1997.

  12. Kuhn reported “the big news” of son Nathaniel’s birth to Roger Hahn; see Kuhn to Hahn, February 10, 1958, courtesy of Roger Hahn.

  13. To judge from his footnotes, Kuhn relied entirely on English translations for works in Greek and primarily on them for works in Latin and seventeenth-century Italian and French.

  14. Kuhn’s travails with his manuscript on the Copernican revolution give an indication, albeit an exaggerated one, of his writing difficulties.

References

  1. Quoted in Skuli Sigurdsson, “The Nature of Scientific Knowledge: An Interview [in 1989] with Thomas Kuhn,” Harvard Science Review 3 (Winter 1990), 18–25, on 20.

  2. Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions [Vol. II, No. 8, International Encyclopedia of Unified Sciences] (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press and Toronto: The University of Toronto Press, 1962).

  3. Quoted in Sigurdsson, “Nature of Scientific Knowledge” (ref. 1), p. 23.

  4. Jensine Andresen, “Crisis and Kuhn,” Isis 90 Supplement (1999), S43–S67; Steve Fuller, Thomas Kuhn: A Philosophical History for Our Times (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2000). Andresen’s most interesting contribution to our knowledge of early Kuhn in her modestly-researched article is her suggestion that Kuhn’s response as a pacifist to the international crisis in 1939–1941 later influenced his characterization of the experiences of scientists during scientific revolutions. Fuller’s most concrete contribution in his overblown and tendentious critique of Structure is his fairly-reliable examination of Kuhn’s debts to Harvard’s President Conant.

  5. [Yearbook Staff], “Thomas Samuel Kuhn,” Taft (ca. May 1940). I thank Anne Romano for transcribing the entry on Kuhn; personal communication, August 4, 1997.

  6. Romano, ibid.

  7. Sigurdsson, “Nature of Scientific Knowledge” (ref. 1), pp. 18–19; Thomas S. Kuhn, Aristides Baltas, Kostas Gavroglu, and Vasso Kindi, “A Discussion [in 1995] with Thomas S. Kuhn: A Physicist who became a Historian for Philosophical Purposes,” Neusis: Journal for the History and Philosophy of Science 6 (1997), 145–200, on 145, 147–148.

  8. Kuhn, et al., “Discussion” (ref. 7), pp. 148, 152. For the Harvard Crimson’s evaluations of Kuhn’s first-year courses in physics and mathematics, see The Confidential Guide (1940), 32, 34–35.

  9. Kuhn, et al., “Discussion” (ref. 7), p. 149.

  10. Kuhn, et al., “Discussion” (ref. 7), pp. 149–150, 183. For a rave review of Philosophy A, which was taught by Raphael Demos, see The Confidential Guide (1940), 30. The section leaders, Arnold Isenberg and Stanley W. Moore, did much to make this an exceptional course; Barbara Rosenkrantz, personal conversation, November 22, 1997, and personal communication, December 9, 1997.

  11. For Kuhn’s first-year activities, see The 1944 Red Book (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1941), pp. 105, 204, 207. For his activities in the Debating Council and Liberal Union during the next two years, see The Nineteen Forty-Two Harvard Senior Album (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1942), pp. 250–251, and The Nineteen Forty-Three Harvard Album (1943), p. 195.

  12. Kuhn, “The War and My Crisis” (October 2, 1941), Thomas S. Kuhn Papers (MC 240), Institute Archives and Special Collections, MIT Libraries, Cambridge Mass., box 1/3; hereafter TSKP.

  13. Kuhn, et al., “Discussion” (ref. 7), p. 148; Pierre Noyes, personal communication, December 5, 1996.

  14. Kuhn, et al., “Discussion” (ref. 7), p. 152.

  15. Kuhn, “The War and My Crisis” (ref. 12) and “International Morale and a United States Declaration of War” (October 19, 1941), TSKP, box 1/3; see also Andresen, “Crisis and Kuhn” (ref. 4), pp. S49–S52.

  16. Kuhn, “The Metaphysical Possibilities of Physics” (ca. January 1942), TSKP, box 1/3.

  17. Kuhn to his aunt Emma K. Fischer, July 27, 1943, TSKP, box 12/33; Kuhn, Appendix: Guggenheim Application, “Intellectual Autobiography.”

  18. Sigurdsson, “Nature of Scientific Knowledge” (ref. 1), p. 19; Kuhn, et al., “Discussion” (ref. 7), p. 148; Pierre Noyes, personal communication, December 3, 1996.

  19. Kuhn’s election was announced on February 25, 1942, after he had reviewed two movies, one book, and two journal issues and co-written one editorial; see “Crimson Editorial Comment Books” (November 29, 1941–February 14, 1942), 113, 125, 141, 213, 241, 243, and (February 16–April 23, 1942), 47, Harvard University Archives; hereafter HUA.

  20. Ibid. (April 24–July 15, 1942), 39, 103. The first of these editorials elicited pages of remarks—most of them critical—from his fellow editors in the Editorial Comment Book.

  21. Ibid., p. 291.

  22. [Kuhn], “Forecast for ’47” (October 7, 1942), ibid. (July 17–October 10, 1942), 275.

  23. The Nineteen Forty-Three Harvard Album (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1943), 246; I date his report to fall 1942 because the Harvard University Library received its printed copy of the Album on January 29, 1943.

  24. Kuhn to Emma K. Fischer, July 27, 1943 (ref. 17).

  25. Anon., “Harvard and Radar Countermeasures,” Harvard Alumni Bulletin 48 (December 8, 1945), 239–244; Frederick E. Terman, “Administrative History of the Radio Research Laboratory” ([Cambridge, Mass.]: Radio Research Laboratory, 1946), HUA.

  26. Kuhn, RRL reports and correspondence, TSKP, box 1/8–10; see also Sigurdsson, “Nature of Scientific Knowledge” (ref. 1), p. 19; Kuhn, et al., “Discussion” (ref. 7), pp. 153–156, 158, 183–184.

  27. Kuhn, Appendix: Guggenheim Application, “Intellectual Autobiography”; Sigurdsson, “Nature of Scientific Knowledge” (ref. 1), p. 20.

  28. For an insightful assessment, see Michael A. Dennis, “Historiography of Science: An American Perspective,” in John Krige and Dominique Pestre, ed., Science in the Twentieth Century (London: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1997), pp. 1–26.

  29. That Kuhn had mixed feelings about the atomic bomb is suggested by the editorial “Science at War,” Harvard Alumni Bulletin 48 (December 8, 1945), 235; that Kuhn was the author is suggested by its style and the presence of two offprints in TSKP, box 1/4.

  30. General Education in a Free Society: Report of the Harvard Committee (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1945); see also James B. Conant, My Several Lives: Memoirs of a Social Inventor (New York: Harper & Row, 1970), pp. 363–369. For its publication in August, which may well have been orchestrated by Conant, see Harvard Alumni Bulletin 48 (September 22, 1945), 23.

  31. Kuhn, et al., “Discussion” (ref. 7), p. 159. For a profile of Buck, a Pulitzer-prize-winning Southern historian, see Harvard Alumni Bulletin 48 (October 20, 1945), cover page, 113–114.

  32. [Kuhn], “General Education in a Free Society: Twelve Harvard Professors Examine anew the American Educational System, Analyze its Shortcomings, and Propose New Directions,” and “Subjective View,” Harvard Alumni Bulletin 48 (1945), 23–24, 29–30. Kuhn often claimed authorship of the first item in his c.v.

  33. General Education in a Free Society (ref. 30), p. 224; Conant, My Several Lives (ref. 30), pp. 371–372.

  34. Kuhn, et al., “Discussion” (ref. 7), pp. 157, 164. For Kuhn’s papers in these philosophy courses, see TSKP, box 1/3.

  35. TSKP, box 14/17.

  36. “Since the laboratory disbanded [in November 1945],” Kuhn reported to his graduating class a few months later, “I’ve been back in school as a predoctoral Fellow of the National Research Council, trying to learn some physics. The first hurdle went down in June when I received an MA”; [Kuhn], “Thomas Samuel Kuhn,” in Class of 1944 Triennial Report (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1947), 210.

  37. Sigurdsson, “Nature of Scientific Knowledge” (ref. 1), p. 19.

  38. Kuhn eventually gave his two years of psychoanalysis credit for enabling him “‘To climb into other people’s heads’” as a historian; see Kuhn, et al., “Discussion” (ref. 7), p. 163. But he did not want anything said about this experience earlier in his life; Kay Kuhn, personal conversation, November 22, 1997.

  39. Benjamin Wright, the first chair of Harvard’s Committee on General Education, probably invited Kuhn to assist in Conant’s course; see Wright to Kuhn, February 3, 1947, and Minutes of Harvard University Committee on General Education, HUA (February 18, 1947); hereafter HUCGE. I thank Juan Vicente Mayoral de Lucas for informing me about Wright’s letter in TSKP; personal communication, January 16, 2003.

  40. Kuhn, Appendix: Guggenheim Application, “Intellectual Autobiography”; Sigurdsson, “Nature of Scientific Knowledge” (ref. 1), pp. 19–20; Kuhn, et al., “Discussion” (ref. 7), p. 158.

  41. James B. Conant, On Understanding Science: An Historical Approach (New Haven: Yale University Press, [April] 1947); Kuhn, et al., “Discussion” (ref. 7), p. 159.

  42. Conant, On Understanding Science (ref. 41), pp. 3–5, 12, 14, 16, 18.

  43. Kuhn, “Objectives of a General Education Course in the Physical Sciences” (May 1947), TSKP, box 1/4.

  44. Kuhn frequently attributed his discovery of history to Conant’s influence; see, for instance, Kuhn, Appendix: Guggenheim Application, “Intellectual Autobiography”; Structure (ref. 2), dedication and p. xi; The Essential Tension: Selected Studies in Scientific Tradition and Change (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1977), p. xi; and Sigurdsson, “Nature of Scientific Knowledge” (ref. 1), p. 20. In the preface to his first book, The Copernican Revolution: Planetary Astronomy in the Development of Western Thought (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1957), he went so far as to proclaim “work with [Conant] first persuaded me that historical study could yield a new sort of understanding of the structure and function of scientific research. Without my own Copernican revolution, which he fathered, neither this book nor my other essays in the history of science would have been written”; see p. ix. For scholarly assessments of Conant’s influence on Kuhn, see, for instance, Robert K. Merton, “The Sociology of Science: An Episodic Memoir,” in Robert K. Merton and Jerry Gaston, ed., The Sociology of Science in Europe (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1977), pp. 3–141, on pp. 85–88, and Fuller, Thomas Kuhn (ref. 4), passim.

  45. For Kuhn’s “conceptual structure,” Conant generally used “conceptual scheme”; see, for example, On Understanding Science (ref. 41), p. 18.

  46. Ibid., p. 29.

  47. Kuhn, Essential Tension (ref. 44), p. xi; Sigurdsson, “Nature of Scientific Knowledge” (ref. 1), p. 20; Kuhn, et al., “Discussion” (ref. 7), p. 159. According to the course’s lecture schedule, Conant eventually assigned the physicist Kuhn eight lectures, one on hydrostatics (October 3), one on the physical behavior of gases (November 21), and six on dynamics (December 1, 3, 5, 8, 10, 12), and the astronomer Watson another seven lectures on astronomy and the aberration of light; see “Final Schedule of Natural Science 11a” [ca. September 1947], James B. Conant Papers, HUA, box 8; hereafter Conant Papers.

  48. Conant, On Understanding Science (ref. 41), p. xv; Kuhn, et al., “Discussion” (ref. 7), p. 167. For Cohen’s long path into the history of science, see “A Harvard Education,” Isis 75 (1984), 13–21. Cohen made no mention here of his assistance to Conant or to Kuhn, but he later recalled advising Kuhn about readings in the history of science prior to Kuhn’s participation in Conant’s course; Cohen, personal communication, November 10, 1997.

  49. Kuhn, Essential Tension (ref. 44), p. xi. In his lecture notes for December 1, 1947, Kuhn opened his discussion of the “Problem of motion” in antiquity with the observation that, “For Arist[otle] Motion = Change = Alteration”; see TSKP, box 9, note cards.

  50. For example, Kuhn, Structure (ref. 2), p. vii; Sigurdsson, “Nature of Scientific Knowledge” (ref. 1), p. 20; Kuhn, et al., “Discussion” (ref. 7), pp. 161, 167, 173.

  51. The conference was arranged with Cohen’s assistance and took place during December 19–21, 1947. Other amateur and professional historians of science and medicine in attendance were Erwin Ackerknecht (Wisconsin), Carl B. Boyer (Brooklyn), Joseph S. Fruton (Yale), John F. Fulton (Yale), Edward Rosen (City College of New York), Richard H. Shryock (Pennsylvania), Robert C. Stauffer (Wisconsin), and George Urdang (Wisconsin); see “Conference on Science in General Education: Guest List,” Conant Papers, box 8.

  52. Kuhn, et al., “Discussion” (ref. 7), p. 160.

  53. George Sarton, “Qualifications of Teachers of the History of Science,” Isis 37 (1947), 5–7; idem, ibid. 40 (1949), 311–323.

  54. One sign of Conant’s confidence in Kuhn was that he involved him in the planning of Natural Sciences 11a’s year-long successor; see “Outline of Natural Science 4 as agreed to tentatively at a conference held in Cambridge on May 2, 1948, attended by Messrs. Conant, Roller, Watson, Nash, and Kuhn,” Conant Papers, box 7.

  55. For Conant’s relations with Sarton, see his “George Sarton and Harvard University,” Isis 48 (1957), 301–305, and James G. Hershberg, James B. Conant: Harvard to Hiroshima and the Making of the Nuclear Age (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993), pp. 407–409, 860.

  56. For the Society’s selection process and modus operandi during the time of Kuhn’s appointment, see “The Society of Fellows: The Story of Fifteen Years,” Harvard Alumni Bulletin 50 (April 24, 1948), 593–599. Since it would have been awkward for Conant to have sponsored Kuhn for a Junior Fellowship, Kuhn’s dissertation advisor Van Vleck gave testimony on his behalf to the Society’s board; see Van Vleck to S.G. Cohen, June 29, 1953, Conant Papers, which letter was kindly called to my attention by David Kaiser. For Kuhn’s appointment letter (May 17, 1948), see TSKP, box 14/10. Kuhn was one of seven Junior Fellows chosen that spring; see Crane Brinton, ed., The Society of Fellows (Cambridge: Society of Fellows of Harvard University, 1959).

  57. Kuhn received two leaves (July 1 to September 30 and October 1–31, 1948) from the Society of Fellows so that he could complete his dissertation; see Society of Fellows to Kuhn, June 9 and October 4, 1948, TSKP, box 14/10.

  58. Kay Kuhn, personal communication, October 1, 1997.

  59. In his acknowledgments, Kuhn thanked Van Vleck for his suggestion of the topic and for “his insight into … the psychological problems inherent in its author’s researching,” and his “fiancee, Miss Kathryn Muhs,” for her help with “the preparation of the manuscript” and for “her unfailing understanding”; see “The Cohesive Energy …,” Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, November 1948, HUA, p. vii. Kuhn’s Ph.D. was awarded in March 1949; Lee Fallontowne, personal communication, September 12, 1997.

  60. [Kuhn], “Thomas Samuel Kuhn,” in Harvard Class of 1944 Sexennial Report (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1950), pp. 170–171.

  61. Kuhn, Appendix: Guggenheim Application, “Intellectual Autobiography.”

  62. Ibid., and Kuhn, Structure (ref. 2), pp. vi–vii.

  63. Kuhn, “NOTES ON BOOK: IF ANY” (December 6, 1949), TSKP, box 3/10.

  64. Leonard Nash, personal communications, October 4 and November 2, 1997.

  65. Kuhn, “Washington University Conference” (May 12, 1949), TSKP, box 12/33; “Guest List for Conference, Harvard University, July 9 and 10, 1949,” Conant Papers, box 7. For a report, see “Harvard Summer School: Conference on Science in General Education,” Isis 41 (1950), 46.

  66. For Kuhn’s involvement with the case histories, see James B. Conant, ed., Robert Boyle’s Experiments in Pneumatics, Harvard Case Histories in Experimental Science, Case 1 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1950), p. 10, and Leonard Nash, The Atomic-Molecular Theory, ibid., Case 4 (1950), p. iv.

  67. Hershberg, James B. Conant (ref. 55), pp. 391–462.

  68. Kuhn, et al., “Discussion” (ref. 7), pp. 163–164. For Nash’s popularity, see The Confidential Guide (1949), 51–52.

  69. The Committee on Undergraduate Education approved Kuhn and Nash as instructors for Natural Sciences 4 during 1950–1951 on December 13, 1949; see HUCGE.

  70. For the Kuhns’ travel plans, see Kuhn to William Lawrence, April 13, 1950, TSKP, box 13/10. In London, Kuhn visited Karl Popper (whose James Lectures at Harvard he had attended earlier that year) and met Mary Hesse and Alistair Crombie; in Oxford he met Stephen Toulmin; in Cambridge he dined with Herbert Butterfield, and in Paris he met, but not fruitfully, Gaston Bachelard; see Kuhn, et al., “Discussion” (ref. 7), p. 164, 166–169, 177; Kay Kuhn, personal conversations, November 21–22, 1997; Karl Popper, “Replies to My Critics,” in P.A. Schilpp, ed., The Philosophy of Karl Popper. Vol. II (La Salle: Open Court, 1974), pp. 961–1197, on p. 1144. Citing Kuhn to Conant, May 8, 1950, Fuller reports that Kuhn’s visit to Herbert Dingle’s group at University College, London, was at the behest of Conant who wanted to learn what Dingle’s program in the history and philosophy of science was all about; see Fuller, Thomas Kuhn (ref. 4), p. 173, n.

  71. Harvard University: Faculty of Arts and Sciences, … Courses of Instruction (for 1950–1951), p. 259. For a recent account of Nash’s relationship with Kuhn during 1950–1962, see Struan Jacobs, “J.B. Conant’s Other Assistant: Science as Depicted by Leonard K. Nash, Including Reference to Thomas Kuhn,” Perspectives on Science 18 (2010), 328–351.

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  72. Kuhn eventually published one of the case histories that he worked up for the course; see his Copernican Revolution (ref. 44), pp. viii–ix; and Nash, personal communication, October 4, 1997.

  73. Kuhn to Owen, January 6, 1951, TSKP, box 3/10: Andresen, “Crisis and Kuhn” (ref. 4), p. S62.

  74. HUCGE (January 9, 1951).

  75. HUCGE (February 20, 1951).

  76. For correspondence and publicity prior to Kuhn’s Lowell Lectures and for their text, see TSKP, box 3/10–11.

  77. Kuhn, et al., “Discussion” (ref. 7), p. 170. Kay Kuhn typed the text for his Lowell Lectures from dictaphone versions that Kuhn prepared while rehearsing them; Kay Kuhn, phone conversation, November 9, 1997.

  78. Kuhn, Appendix: Guggenheim Application, “Intellectual Autobiography”; Structure (ref. 2), p. ix.

  79. Kuhn, Lowell Lectures (March 1951), TSKP, box 3/11. The text for each lecture is separately paginated; for the quotations, see Lecture 1, pp. 3–5, 22; Lecture 5, p. 13; Lecture 6, pp. 21–24.

  80. For “anomaly,” see ibid., Lecture 5, p. 24; for “paradigm,” Lecture 5, p. 46, Lecture 6, pp. 1, 3, 11. He did not define “paradigm” because he meant nothing more by this uncommon word than its standard meaning, “illustrative example.”

  81. Ibid., Lecture 5, p. 5.

  82. Ibid., pp. 17–22, 25–26, 30–31.

  83. Ibid., pp. 38–42.

  84. Harvard officials to Kuhn, June 20, 1951 and April 7, 1952, TSKP, box 14/10.

  85. Between 1951–1952 and 1952–1953, they renamed the course “The Process of Research in Physical Science” and, coincidentally, its enrollment grew from about 70 to about 150; see Harvard University: Faculty of Arts and Sciences, … Courses of Instruction (for 1951–1952), p. 277, and (for 1952–1953), p. 281.

  86. The Confidential Guide (1952), 36; (1953), 47; (1954), 43. For other, more positive reports about Kuhn’s performance in Natural Sciences 4, see Joseph R. Levenson to George H. Guttridge, October 11, 1955, Thomas S. Kuhn’s Dossier, Personnel Records, University of California at Berkeley; hereafter Kuhn Papers UCB; and Leonard Nash, personal communication, October 4, 1997.

  87. Harvard University: Faculty of Arts and Sciences, … Courses of Instruction (for 1952–1953), p. 341; Hahn, personal communication, September 14, 1997.

  88. Ibid. (for 1953–1954), pp. 178–79; Brush, personal communications, July 15 and August 15, 1997; see also Stephen G. Brush, “Thomas Kuhn as a Historian of Science,” Science & Education 9 (2000), 39–58.

  89. Kuhn, “Vita” (October 1, 1955), Kuhn Papers UCB.

  90. For references to Kuhn’s role in HSS Council meetings between December 1952 and April 1954, see Isis 44 (1953), 205–209; 45 (1954), 123; and 46 (1955), 310–313.

  91. Kuhn received and accepted an invitation from Charles Morris around January 1953 to write the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science’s volume on the history of science; see Kuhn, Appendix: Guggenheim Application, “Plans for Research.” Kuhn was probably suggested to Morris by Cohen, who had decided that he did not want to fulfill his commitment of June 1952 to write this volume; Kuhn’s contract to write it was completed in June 1953; George A. Reisch, personal communication, September 21, 1997; Cohen, personal communication, November 10, 1997; George A. Reisch, “A History of the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago, 1995, p, 33.

  92. J.K. Weiss of the Fund to Kuhn, April 8, 1954; J.F. Mathias of the Guggenheim Foundation to Kuhn, April 19, 1954, TSKP, box 14/17.

  93. Merton, “The Sociology of Science” (ref. 44), pp. 95–100, 122. Merton recalled that he and Edward Shils played the primary role in promoting Kuhn’s invitation. It is likely that Buck of Harvard, who was on the Center’s three-man fellowship committee along with Merton, supported Kuhn as well.

  94. Kuhn to Ralph W. Tyler of the Center, May 3, 1954; Robert A. Scott, personal communication, July 28, 1997.

  95. During fall 1954, Kuhn chaired the HSS’s Nominating Committee and refereed one manuscript for Isis; Kuhn to Dorothy Stimson, October 16, 1954, and Kuhn to Cohen, October 28, 1954, HSS Collection, Smithsonian Institution, RU 7474, box 16/23 and box 19/11; hereafter HSS SI.

  96. Kuhn to Stimson, May 15, 1955, ibid., box 16/23.

  97. Kuhn, “Vita” (October 25, 1955), HUA. I say “obliged” because the phrasing in this c.v., which evidently was prepared for his Harvard tenure review, differs from that in the c.v. that he had provided Berkeley some three weeks earlier. There he merely wrote that the book was “[p]robably to be published by the Harvard University Press during the spring of 1956”; see Kuhn, “Vita” (October 1, 1955), Kuhn Papers UCB. In spring or summer 1955, Kuhn told Harvard senior Joy Colby about his difficulties with carrying through the revisions requested by the Press’s referee whom he suspected was Cohen; Joy Colby Harvey, personal interview, November 21, 1997, and personal communication, December 6, 1997. Roger Hahn, who read an early draft of the manuscript, had a vivid recollection that extensive editing was needed; Hahn, personal communication, September 14, 1997.

  98. Thomas S. Kuhn, “Carnot’s Version of ‘Carnot’s Cycle,’” American Journal of Physics 23 (1955), 91–95; idem, “La Mer’s Version of ‘Carnot’s Cycle,’” ibid., 387–389. To make matters worse, the first of these articles was originally submitted in March 1954 before his fellowship year began.

  99. Evidently a colleague at Harvard’s Kirkland House passed word of Kuhn’s situation to Berkeley’s Stephen Pepper; see Kuhn, et al., “Discussion” (ref. 7), p. 174.

  100. W.V. Quine to William R. Dennes, October 4, 1955, Kuhn Papers UCB.

  101. HUCGE (November 9, 1955). Steve Fuller drew my attention to the records of this meeting ca. 1990. In his view, the departure of Kuhn’s patron Conant from Harvard to be U.S. Ambassador to West Germany and the marginal position of the history of science at Harvard contributed in major ways to Kuhn’s release by Harvard; see his Thomas Kuhn (ref. 4): pp. xv, 219ff, 383. However, the deficiencies in Kuhn’s publication record were quite enough to have led to this outcome.

  102. HUCGE (December 13, 1955). According to one of his students during 1955–1956, Kuhn was excused from all teaching responsibilities during spring semester; Daniel Alexandrov, personal conversation, January 14, 2000, who had this information from Shigeru Nakayama.

  103. Pepper to Edward W. Strong, February 8, 1956, Kuhn Papers UCB. Pepper’s remarks suggest that he was implicitly struggling with his colleagues’ and/or his own anti-Semitism.

  104. Marshall Clagett, I. Bernard Cohen, I.E. Drabkin, John F. Fulton, Henry Guerlac, and Conway Zirkle, “George Sarton 1884–1956,” Isis 47 (1956), 99–100.

  105. Hunter and Betty Dupree, interview with Paul Forman and the author, November 23, 1997.

  106. Kuhn to Hahn, September 19, 1956, courtesy of Roger Hahn.

  107. Evidently elected to membership in the Dinner Club before or shortly after his arrival in Berkeley, Kuhn attended all ten of its meetings from fall 1956 through spring 1958; he spoke in favor of Hunter Dupree’s election in October 1957, and he hosted Marie Boas (the speaker) and A. Rupert Hall in November 1957; Minutes of the History of Science Dinner Club, Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley (October 1957–March 1958); hereafter HSDC. For the Dinner Club, see Roger Hahn, “Berkeley’s History of Science Dinner Club: A Chronicle of Fifty Years of Activity,” Isis 90 Supplement (1999), S182–S191.

  108. For brief reports on Kuhn’s measurement paper of October 1956, see Kuhn to Hahn, May 24, 1957, courtesy of Roger Hahn, and Thomas S. Kuhn, “The Function of Measurement in Modern Physical Science,” Isis 52 (1961), 161–193, on 161, n. 2. For Kuhn’s presentation of his paper on the caloric theory in late December 1956, see “Reports of [AAAS] Sections and Societies,” Science 125 (February 15, 1957), 293–304, on 299–300. This seems to have been his first paper at an HSS meeting. He gave it again at the History of Science Dinner Club the following month; see HSDC (January 11, 1957).

  109. Marie Boas, “History of Science Society Minutes of Council Meeting of 20 October 1956,” Isis 49 (1958), 99–102; idem, “27 December 1956,” ibid., 102–104.

  110. Kuhn dated his preface “Berkeley, California, November 1956.” For evidence on the timing of the book’s acceptance, see Kuhn to Hahn, September 19, 1956, courtesy of Roger Hahn.

  111. Kuhn to Hahn, May 24, 1957, courtesy of Roger Hahn. For the outline of Kuhn’s colloquium on “The Caloric Theory of Gases” (April 24, 1957), see TSKP, box 3/12.

  112. Thomas S. Kuhn, “Newton’s Optical Papers,” in I. Bernard Cohen, ed., Isaac Newton’s Papers and Letters on Natural Philosophy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1958), pp. 27–45. Some three years earlier, Kuhn had listed this chapter as being in press; see “Bibliography: Thomas S. Kuhn” (ca January 1955), Kuhn Papers UCB.

  113. Thomas S. Kuhn, “The Caloric Theory of Adiabatic Compression,” Isis 49 (1958), 132–140. For interesting pre-publication correspondence, see Cohen to Kuhn, April 25, 1957, and Kuhn to Katharine Strelsky, June 24, 1957, both in HSS SI, RU 7474, box 19/11.

  114. Thomas S. Kuhn, “Energy Conservation as an Example of Simultaneous Discovery,” in Marshall Clagett, ed., Critical Problems in the History of Science: Proceedings of the Institute for the History of Science at the University of Wisconsin, September 1–11, 1957 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1959), pp. 321–356. For this important conference, see Marshall Clagett, “The Institute of the History of Science at Madison, Wisconsin, 1–11 September 1957,” Isis 48 (1957), 461–462; and Martin Rudwick, William Coleman, Edith Sylla, and Lorraine Daston, “Critical Problems in the History of Science,” ibid. 72 (1981), 267–283.

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  115. Kuhn Papers UCB.

  116. A. Hunter Dupree and Thomas S. Kuhn, “Teaching the History of Science: University of California at Berkeley,” Isis 49 (1958), 172–173. According to Dupree, he was the lead author of this piece; Dupree, personal interview, November 23, 1997.

  117. Kuhn to Hahn, June 11, 1958, courtesy of Roger Hahn.

  118. Ibid. Of the early reviews, Kuhn thought that the one by Herbert Butterfield [American Historical Review 63 (May 1958), 656–657] “was the best” and the one by Doris Hellman [Renaissance News 10 (Winter 1957), 217–220] was “much the worst.” In the end, a more negative review came from the pen of Edward Rosen [Scripta Mathematica 24 (December 1959), 330–331], who, after pointing out numerous problems and errors, concluded with the remark that “space limitations preclude the discussion of more serious lapses [which] regrettabl[y] … mar a book otherwise distinguished for enthusiastic and talented exposition.” For evidence that Kuhn took umbrage at Rosen’s review, see his highly critical Isis referee report (March 23, 1960) on a Rosen manuscript, HSS SI, RU 95–152, box 16/197: 42. Rosen ended up publishing the paper elsewhere; see his “Copernicus and Al-Bitruji,” Centaurus 7 (1961), 152–156.

  119. Kuhn to Tyler, May 31, 1957, and January 30, 1958, and Tyler to Kuhn, June 12, 1957, and January 29, 1958, TSKP, box 14/15.

  120. Kuhn to Hahn, June 11, 1958, courtesy of Roger Hahn.

  121. Kuhn, “Inventory of Professional Interests” (ca. August 1958), TSKP, box 14/15; see also Kuhn, Essential Tension (ref. 44), p. xvi.

  122. Thomas S. Kuhn, Reviews of J. F. Scott’s The Scientific Work of René Descartes (1952) and of Albert G.A. Balz’s Descartes and the Modern Mind (1952), Isis 44 (1953), 285–287.

  123. Kuhn, Appendix: Guggenheim Application, “Intellectual Autobiography.”

  124. For evidence of Kuhn’s flexibility as to the department or departments of his appointment, see S. Pepper to E. Strong, February 8, 1956, Kuhn Papers UCB. And for evidence of the importance he attached to his appointment being in the “history of science,” see Dupree and Kuhn, “Teaching the History of Science” (ref. 116), p. 172.

  125. Kuhn, Copernican Revolution (ref. 44), p. viii.

  126. HSDC (January 1957).

  127. Kuhn, “A Historian Views the Philosophy of Science: Lecture for Ernest Adams” (April 16, 1957), TSKP, box 3/12.

  128. Kuhn probably began learning about early thermodynamics from staff discussions of a case study developed by Duane Roller—see Roller’s The Early Development of the Concepts of Temperature and Heat: The Rise and Decline of the Caloric Theory, James B. Conant, ed., Harvard Case Histories in Experimental Science, Case 3 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1950).

  129. Kuhn, Appendix: Guggenheim Application, “Plans for Research.”

  130. Kuhn, “The Structural Chemistry of Robert Boyle” (December 1951), TSKP, box 12/33. A year and a half after the publication of his Boyle study, he implied that his interest in how “philosophical atomism [affected] Boyle’s choice of experiments and of theories” grew out of his expectation that such a study would “illustrate … the intimate guidance supplied to the scientific imagination by a metaphysical system”; see Kuhn, Appendix: Guggenheim Application, “Intellectual Autobiography.”

  131. Kuhn, Appendix: Guggenheim Application, “Plans for Research.”

  132. According to Cohen, his reading of Kuhn’s 1952 paper on Boyle’s chemistry led him to ask Kuhn to write a chapter for his forthcoming book on Newton’s science; Cohen, personal communication, November 10, 1997. At this time, they were about to be colleagues in Harvard’s History of Science Program.

  133. For La Mer’s role in derailing Conant’s election to the presidency of the National Academy of Sciences, see Hershberg, James B. Conant (ref. 55), pp. 485, 878–880.

  134. The only postwar historians to receive such encomiums from Kuhn before mid-1958 were Marie Boas, Norman Kemp Smith, Alexandre Koyré, and Clifford Truesdell. On Boas, see Thomas S. Kuhn, “Robert Boyle and Structural Chemistry in the Seventeenth Century,” Isis 43 (1952), 12–36, on 18; on Kemp Smith’s New Studies in the Philosophy of Descartes (1952), see ibid. 46 (1955), 377–380, on 377–379; on Koyré’s A Documentary History of the Problem of Fall from Kepler to Newton (1955), see ibid. 48 (1957), 91–93; on Koyré’s From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe (1957), see Science, 127 (March 21, 1958), 641; and on Truesdell’s Leonhardi Euleri Opera omnis, series II, Vol. 13 (1956), see Thomas S. Kuhn, “The Caloric Theory of Adiabatic Compression,” Isis 49 (1958), 132–140, on 137, n. 22.

  135. Kuhn, Copernican Revolution (ref. 44), p. 264.

  136. Ibid., p. 220.

  137. Kuhn, “Newton’s Optical Papers” (ref. 112), p. 31, n. 8.

  138. Kuhn, “Caloric Theory” (ref. 134). p. 137.

  139. Kuhn, “Robert Boyle” (ref. 134), pp. 12–15.

  140. Kuhn, “La Mer’s Version” (ref. 98), p. 388.

  141. Kuhn, Copernican Revolution (ref. 44), p. 3.

  142. Ibid., p. 265.

  143. Kuhn, Review of Herbert Dingle’s The Scientific Adventure (1953), Speculum 28 (1953), 879–880, on 880.

  144. Kuhn, “Carnot’s Version” (ref. 98), p. 95.

  145. Kuhn, Copernican Revolution (ref. 44), pp. 3–4.

  146. Kuhn, “Newton’s Optical Papers” (ref. 112), p. 28.

  147. Kuhn, Appendix: Guggenheim Application, “Plans for Research.”

  148. Kuhn, “Energy Conservation” (ref. 114), pp. 321, 323, 345, n. 9. Kuhn’s italics.

  149. Ibid., p. 323. Kuhn’s italics.

  150. Ibid., p. 322.

  151. Kuhn, Appendix: Guggenheim Application, “Plans for Research.”

  152. Kuhn, Essential Tension (ref. 44), p. xvi.

  153. By the middle of the fellowship year, he was so discouraged about the monograph that he did not even mention it in biographical updates for Harvard’s Society of Fellows and the Class of 1944; see [Kuhn], “Thomas S[amuel] Kuhn,” in Crane Brinton, ed., The Society of Fellows (Cambridge: Society of Fellows of Harvard University, 1959), pp. 180–181, and “Thomas Samuel Kuhn,” in Class of 1944: 15th Anniversary Report (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1959), p. 133.

  154. Kuhn to Tyler, July 31, 1959, Archives, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford, California.

  155. Aschenbrenner to Constance, November 15, 1960, Dupree to Glenn Seaborg, November 28, 1960, Constance, “Memo of Conference with Professor Kuhn” (December 5, 1960), Clagett to Delmer Brown, March 6, 1961, and Kuhn to Strong, May 5, 1961, all in Kuhn Papers UCB; see also Kuhn, et al., “Discussion” (ref. 7), pp. 180–181, and David A. Hollinger, “Afterword,” in Gene A. Brucker, Henry F. May, and David A. Hollinger, History at Berkeley: A Dialog in Three Parts (Berkeley: Center for Studies in Higher Education and Institute of Governmental Studies, University of California, Berkeley, 1998), pp. 35–51, on pp. 43, 48–49. A better understanding of this story will require archival work at Johns Hopkins on its offer to Kuhn and his response and further interviews and archival work at Berkeley on Kuhn’s relations with his colleagues in the Departments of History and Philosophy during 1959–1961.

  156. Summary of pertinent correspondence during 1960–1961 in Wheeler’s Personal Papers and in the Archives for History of Quantum Physics, both in the American Philosophical Society’s Archives, Kenneth Ford, personal communication, January 4, 1998. See also Thomas S. Kuhn, John L. Heilbron, Paul Forman, and Lini Allen, Sources for History of Quantum Physics: An Inventory and Report (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1967), which includes a historical preface by Wheeler (pp. v–ix). A better understanding of the genesis of SHQP and Kuhn’s role in this project will necessitate much further archival work in the collections perused by Ford and elsewhere.

  157. This somewhat conjectural narrative is based solely on clues that I have seen in published materials; see George A. Reisch, “Did Kuhn Kill Logical Empiricism?” Philosophy of Science 58 (1991), 264–277, on pp. 266–267; Paul Hoyningen-Huene, “Two Letters of Paul Feyerabend to Thomas S. Kuhn on a Draft of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 26 (1995), 353–387; Hershberg, James B. Conant (ref. 55), p. 860, n. 84; Kuhn, Structure (ref. 2), p. xiv; and [Kuhn], “Thomas Samuel Kuhn,” in Class of 1944: 20th Anniversary Report (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1964), pp. 111–112.

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Karl Hufbauer pursued history of science at the University of California, Irvine, from 1966 to 1999, then moved to Seattle where he affiliated with the University of Washington’s Department of History. Stone sculpting has been his chief creative activity since retiring.

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Hufbauer, K. From Student of Physics to Historian of Science: T.S. Kuhn’s Education and Early Career, 1940–1958. Phys. Perspect. 14, 421–470 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00016-012-0098-5

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