PREAMBLE

Any attempt to evaluate the contribution of Thomas Kuhn's work to the history and sociology of science has to take care not to undermine the significance of the work itself; for the more respect we have for it, the less we will be inclined to attribute decisive significance to it as an individual contribution to these fields. Kuhn helped to undermine the view that cultural traditions like those of the sciences could be analysed into so many discrete individual contributions. Indeed, the part he played in correcting the excessive individualism that once characterised studies of the natural sciences stands as an important part of his achievement, acknowledged even today, when individualism is once more rampant in the academic world.

It is worth recalling that, at the outset of Kuhn's career, the ‘problem’ of the nature of the ‘discoveries’ made by individual scientists still figured prominently in the thought of historians of science. In an early paper, Kuhn (1962) cited extensive evidence, and in particular the many documented cases of ‘multiple’ and ‘simultaneous’ discovery, in support of the view that discovery was actually a process wherein the members of the relevant scientific community reoriented themselves cognitively, over an extended period of time, to the states of affairs their research addressed.