Preface

Summary

Every essay in this book has been written especially for this volume. While the book is aimed at a general educated audience, each author aspires to say something sufficiently substantial about one or more dimensions of Kuhn's work to interest experts. Moreover, this is more than a retrospective on Kuhn's work. It is forward-looking as well, with an eye on ongoing developments in philosophy of science, epistemology, social studies of science, and especially the cognitive sciences. Given our space limitations, we focus on Kuhn the philosopher of science rather than Kuhn the historian, and we devote more attention to Kuhn's relation to cognitive science than to social studies of science.

I owe the idea for the project to Terry Moore, Publishing Director for Humanities at Cambridge University Press, New York. Terry conceived the timely new series Contemporary Philosophy in Focus, with this book being one of the first offerings. I appreciate his guidance as to what sort of book it should be. Thanks to production editor Louise Calabro and to copyeditor Helen Greenberg, who gave the volume its final form. Thanks also to my wife, Dr. Gaye McCollum-Nickles, for helpful comments on my own contributions to the volume.

The decision of which authors to include in such a volume is always difficult and somewhat arbitrary. Several outstanding expositors and/or critics of Kuhn had to be passed over in order to keep the volume to a manageable size and to achieve a wider diversity of perspectives on Kuhn's work.