I interviewed Thomas Kuhn about a year ago, as part of my research for my
book The Age of Heretics. He was an uncommonly gracious man, who spent an
hour with me despite the fact that he knew -- and knew that I knew -- that
his "paradigm" had precious little to do with the "paradigm" concepts I
was trying to track down. He asked, in fact, that I make it clear in the
book that any conclusions I drew about paradigms did not come from talking
with him, and I tried to do this in the way that he suggested.
Kuhn wrote about the structure of scientific revolutions. That was noticed
by a young staffer at SRI International named Norm MacEachron. His boss at
the time, Willis Harman, picked up the idea of "paradigms" and used it in
a 1974 paper called Changing Images of Man, which was a key early "New
Age" document. That, in turn, begat all the "new paradigm" talk and
writing of the 1980s and 1990s....
I would never have guessed Kuhn was in his 70s... he seemed much younger.
I am very sorry to hear about his passing. Thanks for passing on that
obituary to this list.
--Art Kleiner, <art@well.com>
Age of Heretics home page: <http://www.well.com/user/art>
Fifth Discipline Fieldbook home page: <http://www.fieldbook.com>
PO Box 943, Oxford OH 45056
--art@well.com (Art Kleiner)
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>