Babak Ashrafi, Jan Golinski, Keith Wailoo, and Tom Misa at the Presidents of AAHM, HSS, and SHOT event. Held online on September 14, 2020.
Princeton University
Kuhn In Princeton: Building History of Science as a Discipline
Kuhn in Princeton reconstructs the little-known story of Thomas S. Kuhn’s transformative years at Princeton University, where he and Charles C. Gillispie sought to establish the history of science as a rigorous academic discipline. Based on extensive archival research and interviews, the book traces the founding, flourishing, and unraveling of Princeton’s History and Philosophy of Science Program from 1956 to 1981. It reveals how Kuhn and Gillispie’s internalist vision—focused on science’s technical content—came under pressure from student activism, the Vietnam War, and a shifting job market. The resulting crisis forced a profound rethinking of disciplinary boundaries and scholarly approaches. Rather than seeing the “social turn” in the history of science as a mere reinterpretation of Kuhn’s Structure, this book shows it arose from the failure of earlier models to adapt to new professional and cultural demands, reshaping the very idea of “Science” itself.
© 2026 Consortium for History of Science, Technology and Medicine | Copyright Infringement