The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas S. Kuhn, Read by
Dennis Holland (Via Audible.com)

I didn’t realize that this book was written in 1962 until after reading the book.

This book for me felt 60% awesome combined with 40% of academic gravitas-err-filler which made it a read that I had to come back to multiple times over the past few weeks. I found myself drifting and thinking about something else while the book rambled on which got annoying.

That 60% though was a good case study on how people shift their thought in the sciences overtime. Kuhn did go into great detail on how paradigm shifts and what forces people to move forward and change their view.

He used examples from history from a bunch the big names in science on how their view really challenged their day’s opinion, and how over history the science body tends to bend history to keep it very (to use a Star Trek term) logical.

What really makes this book interesting, is comparing it to the book ‘The Shock Doctrine’ by Namomi Klien. I find that the contrast between instant gratification and the gradual change over time is fascinating. In some ways.. shocking people is an efficient way. However, in the end I think it always backfires. I believe we have only started to scratch the surface on how uber complex structures work. Take the brain for example. We know somewhat what each area does, however we still don’t (as far as I know) how all of it is randomly meshed together to build a consciousness. The gradual changes that happen organically as Kuhn studies paradigm shifts in science tells a lot about the evolution of knowledge.

The only modern paradigm I will cite is with computing. The personal computer has gone through a series of major interaction changes. First it was build-a-computer. Next it was keyboard based and text prompt. Then it was the classic GUI that added the mouse. Hopefully we are about to enter the next phase of interactions with computers were we’re not constrained by the classic inputs of a computer. Only time will tell.

Thankfully Dennis Holland narrated this book remarkably well which did keep me going by threads. But since I found this book filled too much with academic uselessness I can only give it a 5/10