Tech CEOs and consultants call every minor update a paradigm shift, but the phrase was popularized by a physicist turned philosopher whose original meaning was far more radical. This episode follows Thomas Kuhn from his birth in Cincinnati in 1922 through progressive schooling in New York that prized inquiry over memorization, a Harvard physics degree in 1943, wartime radar work in Europe, and a PhD in 1949. We explain how a request from Harvard president James Conant to teach the history of science, and a three-year junior fellowship, led Kuhn to read Aristotle's physics and realize he had been judging it through a Newtonian lens.

After Harvard denied him tenure in 1957, Berkeley gave him a platform, where he interviewed Niels Bohr the day before Bohr died. His 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions introduced normal science, an ...