The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
Kuhn introduced 'paradigm shifts': science doesn't progress linearly but through revolutionary changes in underlying assumptions. Financial paradigms — efficient markets, passive indexing, 'don't fight the Fed' — function exactly the same way. The old model becomes more baroque as it tries to accommodate anomalies, until someone proposes a simpler explanation. The investor who recognizes paradigm shifts can position for them.
Kuhn used his signature term in so many different senses that he spent the rest of his career clarifying what he meant, and the postscript he added to the second edition walks back half of what made the book exciting. Taken seriously, incommensurability makes scientific progress impossible to explain; taken loosely, it is a truism. Investors who quote it are usually dignifying trend-following. Dry going, too.
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
