[libraryofbabel]

If you read Kuhn's book, you'll see he uses quantum mechanics as one of his examples of a scientific revolution. I mean, you might think he's wrong, but that's stretching the definition of "Kuhnian Revolution" a bit. And sure, Newtonian mechanics might come out in the classical limit, but the probabilistic aspect of QM alone represents a completely different way of viewing the universe than the Newtonian model.

[whatshisface]

I do think Khun is wrong under his own definitions. Quantum amplitudes are over mechanical possibilities, and they no more overturn them than icing overturns cake. :-)

[ordu]

I think you make a mistake when you look at physics with your modern eyes. Knowledge should make you see more, but this is the case when it makes it hard to see the history. Try to look at it with eyes of 19 centuries physicist.

Physics was all deterministic and objective. And then comes QM saying that there is no determinism and about the role of an observer, and comes GR saying there is no objective observer, because different observers can't agree about time and length.

I heard that physics professors in 19 century told their students that they had chosen the wrong career because physics was almost done. There were slight difficulties with electromagnetism, but they surely is going to be resolved in coming years. And then all that shiny and almost complete physics was blown up because very foundations of it were destroyed.

It was a paradigm shift. If it wasn't then what is? Copernicus? But the Ptolemaic astronomy did work and it works today. With its limitations of course, but it works. You can calculate positions of heavenly bodies with epicycles. Galilean laws of motions? But the laws of Aristotle works no worse then when Aristotle invented them.