The Ashtray Argument

Errol Morris is back with his first NY Times blog post since last summer. Don’t quite know where he’s going with it yet, but it features an ashtray thrown at Morris’ head by Thomas Kuhn, father of the paradigm shift and poor marksman.

I had written a paper on James Clerk Maxwell’s displacement current for Kuhn’s seminar on 19th century electricity and magnetism. The paper might have been 30 or so double-spaced pages. Kuhn’s reply, typed on unlined yellow paper, was 30 pages, single-spaced, with Courier marching all the way from the left to the right side of the paper. No margins. He was angry, really angry.

• Errol Morris
• Thomas Kuhn