The Road since Structure: Philosophical Essays, 1970-1993, with an Autobiographical Interview 2nd ed. Edition

"The essays fall into three groups, each arranged chronologically. The first shows the development of Kuhn's thought from 1980 through 1990, the second consists of his responses to criticisms of other philosophers, the last is a candid, highly interesting and informative interview Kuhn did a year before his death. . . . His work is central to the question of the relation of science and culture."
-- "Library Journal"

"In 1962, Thomas Kuhn wrote The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, arguing that science proceeds in two ways. 'Normal' science does experiments and expands our knowledge under agreed theories; but 'revolutionary' science introduces a new conceptual framework (a 'paradigm shift'), and demands that we abandon some of what was previously believed. . . . This very useful collection shows the evolution of Kuhn's ideas from 1970, with replies to his critics (including Popper and Feyerabend), and a long interview conducted a year before his death in 1996."-- "Guardian"

"Thomas Kuhn wrote The Structure of Scientific Revolutions in 1962 for a long-forgotten series of monographs called the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science, which is ironic, in retrospect, because Kuhn's masterpiece did not really unify science at all. It broke it open, exposing the inner workings of human creativity and starting, along the way, a thousand arguments."--Malcolm Gladwell "New Yorker"

Divided into three parts, The Road since Structure is the fullest record we now have of the new direction Kuhn was taking during the last two decades of his life. The first part of the book consists of essays, philosophical rather than historical in nature, in which Kuhn refines the basic concepts set forth in Structure&;paradigm shifts, incommensurability, and the nature of scientific progress. In part two, Kuhn replies at length to criticisms of his earlier work. Here the reader will find Kuhn arguing his position with some of the most significant philosophers of the time, including Paul Feyerabend and Karl Popper.

The third part of the volume is the transcript of a remarkable autobiographical interview with Kuhn conducted in Athens in 1995, not quite a year before his death. Here, the usually reticent Kuhn discusses his own intellectual development&;his family and upbringing, his education, the influence of his training as a physicist, his war work, his relations with his colleagues, the responses to Structure&;as well as his struggles to define his philosophical position both before and after that landmark work.

The Road since Structure is the definitive companion to The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Forceful and accessible, it illuminates and further develops Kuhn's classic book, and it will intrigue everyone who has been engaged by Structure and the debates it launched. In it they will find the story not only of Kuhn's development but also of the man himself.