“the Historical Structure of Scientific Discovery”

“The Historical Structure of Scientific Discovery”

In Kuhn’s essay about “The Historical Structure of Scientific Discovery”, he describes the discovery of oxygen and how an individual is credited with the discovery. Throughout the essay Kuhn show that he disagrees with the current vocabulary describing how and who is the one to be accredited with the discovery of a certain thing, in this case oxygen. He believes that in many cases oxygen was discovered well before when history tells it was and by a different person. The ones he believes to have discovered oxygen did in fact observe oxygen but at that time didn’t fully understand what they were discovering. Given these facts Kuhn thinks that a new vocabulary should be used to describe who and when actually made a discovery.
Using the approach of considering first the historical problem presented by the attempt to and place a major class of fundamental discoveries, is how Kuhn would like to start as how to give credit to a discovery. The thought that without these prior attempts and attempts at these discoveries than the later discovers of oxygen wouldn’t have any basis to be doing their experiments off of. This is why Kuhn thinks more credit should be given to these earlier scientists working on discovering oxygen because they paved the way for later scientists. Even though these earlier scientists didn’t fully understand what oxygen was they still discovered its existence and were able to guide later observations in the full understanding of the element.
Another thought that counters the ideas of Kuhn is the traditional thought on the subject of discoveries and where the credit is given. With traditional thought, providing a detailed explanation of your discovery backed with repeated experimentation showing that you truly understand your discovery is the way your going to credited for your discovery and be recorded in history as the true discoverer, in this case of oxygen. This is generally accepted the to...