Even though this book is rigorous and academically thorough, it isn't technically science at all. Technically, this book is an important work of philosophy, because it seeks to explore the nature of mankind's exploration of truth, as discovered through nature, as understood through science.
The center of the book is the idea that humans need to be flexible in their understanding of reality. The most consistent thing we know from science is that in the past, we were usually wrong about most everything. So it is arrogant to assume that our current understanding of the world is truly correct.
In Kuhn's view, that is something that most people would resist admitting, because it sounds like he's questioning our ability to be objective, but that's exactly what he's doing. He is addressing the fact that in human psychology, we tend to learn something and believe it, and once we believe it, we get a security around the idea that makes it difficult to see forward toward new ways of understanding reality.
Ultimately, the main philosophical value of this book comes in the end when Kuhn ties his theories back to their origin, back to the issue of truth itself. In a word, Kuhn says humans are typically wrong, but by using our received understanding of science in a wise way, we can continue to approximate some kind of "truth."
