Kuhn's Legacy - by Bojana Mladenovic (Hardcover)

About the Book

Bojana Mladenovic offers a novel analysis of Thomas Kuhn's central philosophical project. Kuhn's Legacy demonstrates the vitality of Kuhn's philosophical project and its importance for the study of the philosophy and history of science today.

Book Synopsis

Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is one of the most important books of the twentieth century. Its influence reaches far beyond the philosophy of science, and its key terms, such as "paradigm shift," "normal science," and "incommensurability," are now used in both academic and public discourse without any reference to Kuhn. However, Kuhn's philosophy is still often misunderstood and underappreciated. In Kuhn's Legacy, Bojana Mladenovic offers a novel analysis of Kuhn's central philosophical project, focusing on his writings after Structure.

Mladenovic argues that Kuhn's historicism was always coupled with a firm and consistent antirelativism but that it was only in his mature writings that Kuhn began to systematically develop an original account of scientific rationality. She reconstructs this account, arguing that Kuhn sees the rationality of science as a form of collective rationality. At the purely formal level, Kuhn's conception of scientific rationality prohibits obviously irrational beliefs and choices and requires reason-responsiveness as well as the uninterrupted pursuit of inquiry. At the substantive, historicized level, it rests on a distinctly pragmatist mode of justification compatible with a notion of contingent but robust scientific progress. Mladenovic argues that Kuhn's epistemology and his metaphilosophy both represent a creative and fruitful continuation of the tradition of American pragmatism. Kuhn's Legacy demonstrates the vitality of Kuhn's philosophical project and its importance for the study of the philosophy and history of science today.

Review Quotes

Clear and thorough, Mladenovic's arguments are certain to advance Kuhn's ideas beyond the canon.-- "Choice"

In the book Kuhn's Legacy: Epistemology, Metaphilosophy and Pragmatism, Bojana Mladenovic provides a careful re-engagement with Kuhn's work.--Adrien De Sutter "Science as Culture"

Presents a valuable discussion of crucial problems of epistemology in a clear and thorough manner.-- "Isis"

Rich and insightful book.--Vincenzo Politi "Metascience"

What emerges from Mladenovic´'s rich and insightful book is not the often criticised scientist turned historian who, as it is maligned by some, never managed to become a 'real' philosopher. Rather, Mladenovic´'s Kuhn is a deep thinker, immersed in the philosophical milieu of his time and engaged in the analysis and reconceptualization of some crucial philosophical notions.-- "Metascience"

Kuhn's Legacy integrates Kuhn's mature reflections and developments with his classic The Structure of Scientific Revolutions in a clear and persuasive narrative. Bojana Mladenovic poses probing interpretive questions about the texts while also examining constraints concerning how best to answer such questions. The results support a pragmatic, communitarian conception of inquiry that she ascribes to Kuhn and, reflexively, applies to investigations of Kuhn, including her own. It is brilliantly done.--Arthur Fine, University of Washington

Mladenovic's Kuhn may well be the closest to Kuhn's Kuhn that we are ever going to get. This book is a deeply impressive, thorough, fair weighing of how to think Kuhn's philosophy of science. With a rich diet of comparisons, Mladenovic takes one through the voluminous literature on Kuhn, setting out a compelling case for his excellence and contemporary relevance.--Rupert Read, University of East Anglia, author of Kuhn: Philosopher of Scientific Revolution

About the Author

Bojana Mladenovic is professor of philosophy at Williams College. She is the editor of Kuhn's Last Writings (forthcoming), which includes Kuhn's Shearman Memorial Lectures, "The Presence of Past Science," and his unfinished book, The Plurality of Worlds: An Evolutionary Theory of Scientific Development.