Abstract

Looking at Thomas Kuhn's work from a cognitive science perspective helps to articulate and to legitimize, to some degree, his rejection of traditional views of concepts, categorization, theory structure, and rule-based problem solving. Whereas my colleagues focus on the later Kuhn of the MIT years, I study the early Kuhn as an anticipation of case-based reasoning and schema theory. These recent developments in cognitive psychology and artificial intelligence may point toward a more computational version of Kuhn's ideas, but they also expose ambiguities in his work, notably in his understanding of exemplars