From Conant's Education Strategy to Kuhn's Research Strategy

Abstract

The seminal influence of Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions on the history, philosophy, and sociology of science illustrates how changes in pedagogical demands can significantly alter patterns of research. Kuhn's book was honed as a teacher in the General Education of Science curriculum designed by Harvard President James Bryant Conant, to whom Structure is dedicated. The courses targeted non-scientists who would have to make policy decisions in the dawning ‘Atomic Age’, where science would play an increasing role, despite the public skepticism generated by the atomic bomb (which Conant administered). Conant wanted these future policymakers to be ‘connoisseurs’ of science who understood problematic Big Science as continuing the basic mindset of culturally valued Little Science. This partly explains why Kuhn presented science as following the same stages, regardless of the specific science and period under discussion. I consider three other senses in Conant's curriculum left its imprint on Kuhn's research practice: the use of case histories to manufacture the internal/external history distinction; the invention of the historiographical mirage known as ‘normal science’; the application of the incommensurability thesis to create a more receptive attitude to past scientists.