The article sketches the roots of T. Kuhn’s problematic of «paradigms» in the history of methodological controversy in the philosophy of science, and in particular in the undermining of the inductivist ideal that reigned supreme in the era of positivism. The theory’s central theses and problems (viz, «incommensurability») are reviewed. The conclusion is reached that the Kuhnian overcoming of positivism allows for the reconnecting of the scientific mentality and procedure not only with its own historical antecedents and presuppositions, but also with some larger philosophical concerns pertaining to the integration of thought into its social environment that the rise of pure science was supposed to have obviated.
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