Oana Serban, "After Thomas Kuhn: The Structure of Aesthetic Revolutions" (de Gruyter, 2022)
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What is the purpose of this episode and who are the hosts?
Hi everyone, this is Marshall Poe. I'm the founder of the New Books Network, and I'm also a historian. I used to be a history professor, and I love maps. So I'm especially happy to tell you that this episode is sponsored by What's Your Map, which was the winner of the best education podcast at the 2025 British Podcast Awards. What's Your Map is hosted by historian and prize-winning author, Professor Jerry Broughton. In each episode, he invites a guest to share. A map close to their heart and unfurl the ideas, inspirations, and stories behind it. I can tell you I've listened and it's fascinating. The podcast is in its sixth series and is enjoyed by audiences around the globe. You can explore all the maps in the podcast at occulehyphenmundi.com while you listen.
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Hello and welcome to New Books and Philosophy, a podcast channel with New Books Network. I'm Carrie Figdoor, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Iowa. I'm co host of the channel along with Robert Talise, Sarah Tyson, and Malcolm Keating. Together we bring you conversations with philosophers about their new books in a wide range of areas of contemporary philosophical inquiry. Today's interview is with Oana Scherman, lecturer in philosophy at the University of Bucharest. Her new book, After Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Aesthetic Revolutions, is just out from De Groyter. Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions revolutionized the way philosophers and historians of science thought about science, scientific progress, and the nature of scientific knowledge.
Bakun himself also considered later on how his framework might apply to art. In her new book, Scherban elaborates on the suggestions and proposals of Kuhn and others to develop a new view of aesthetic and artistic progress and change based in Kuhn's work. Sherman adds the key concept of aesthetic validity to the Cunian analysis as central to the concept of an aesthetic revolution. The dominance of a particular aesthetic paradigm depends on broadly political factors and our responses to particular ideological questions, such as what is the relation between humans and God? Artistic revolutions, in contrast, are stylistic expressions of these ideological frames and Such that the norms, values, and styles in art can be transgressive.
without being Coonian revolutions. This is an intriguing book which extends the Kunan framework into a non canonical area. I hope you enjoy the podcast. Hello, Oana Sherban. Welcome to New Books in Philosophy. Hello. Thank you for inviting me. Uh this is a very interesting and and intriguing book. Um I personally found it uh you know, very kind of mind stretching because I am very familiar with Thomas Kuhn and the structure of Scientific revolutions, but I had not thought about uh any possible analogies or extensions uh to the realm of aesthetics, which, you know, apparently you and you know, a good number of other people who I'm also not aware of have already um considered. So I I guess from my perspective, one of the
one of the really interesting thing was to Understand You know, how closely is is this analogy? Uh is it just, you know, a a general uh a a Coone or is are the, you know, parallels are pretty exact? Um, and then also to know your own sort of take on the relationship between the structure of scientific and then artistic and aesthetic. uh revolution. So I found this to be a really really interesting um uh book that that introduced me to a whole different way of thinking about uh about Kuhn's work.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the purpose of this episode and who are the hosts?
0:00–6:50
2
How does Oana Serban introduce her book *After Thomas Kuhn: The Structure of Aesthetic Revolutions*?
6:50–18:39
3
What led Oana Serban to become a philosopher and write this book?
18:39–44:57
4
What is “aesthetic validity” and why is it central to her theory of aesthetic revolutions?
44:57–1:00:15
5
How does she differentiate between artistic revolutions, transgressions, and true Kuhnian revolutions?
1:00:15–1:04:18
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from New Books in Philosophy
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