Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg recommends Thomas Kuhn’s seminal book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions to his followers as part of his “A Year in Books” project. Business Insider carried the story here on March 18, 2015.
Kuhn began thinking about the book, the most cited work in social science, as a junior fellow at Harvard and completed it at the Center. He acknowledged the positive effect of his CASBS fellowship in the book:
"The final stage in the development of this [work] began with an invitation to spend the year 1958-59 at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. Once again I was able to give undivided attention to the problems discussed below. Even more important, spending the year in a community composed predominantly of social scientists confronted me with unanticipated problems about the differences between such communities and those of the natural scientists among whom I had been trained. … Attempting to discover the source of that difference led me to recognize the role in scientific research of what I have since called ‘paradigms.’ … Once that piece of my puzzle fell into place, a draft of this essay emerged rapidly.”
Current fellow, Paul Starr (Sociology, Princeton) suggested in his speech on fellowship at the CASBS 60th Anniversary celebration that: “Kuhn sets the standard for a year’s work at the Center—a very high standard of accomplishment indeed.”
