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“Theory Incommensurability” and Kuhn's History of Science
A Critical Analysis
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 April 2024
Extract
Kuhn's theory of scientific change is founded on the idea that there are minimal defensible grounds for the claim that the history of science is characterized by the cumulative growth of knowledge. According to Kuhn, revolutionary theories in the history of science cannot be perceived as logical and empirical derivations from their predecessors since, quite often, the research methods, theoretical assumptions and the empirical findings of the former are incompatible with the latter. Thus, the analysis of each novel scientific theory must begin with a recognition of the epistemological and ontological independence of that theory's paradigm.
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- Copyright © 1988 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)
References
1 Reference is made to Kuhn's thesis as expounded in The Structure of Scientific Revolution, Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 1962, 2nd ed.
2 See, for example, W.H. Newton Smith, The Rationality of Science, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981, and David Stove, Popper and After, Oxford, Pergamon Press, 1982.
3 Larry Laudan, Progress and Its Problems, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1978, p. 4. Similar views are expressed in F. John Clendinnen, "The Rationality of Method versus Historical Relativism", Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science, vol. 14, No. 1, pp. 23-28, and Harvey Siegel, "What is the Question Concerning the Rationality of Science, "Philosophy of Science, 52 (1985), pp. 517-537.
4 Thomas Kuhn, op. cit., pp. 2-3.
5 Thomas Kuhn, The Copernican Revolution, New York, Random House, 1957, p. 3.
6 Ibid., p. 265.
7 Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, p. 160.
8 See Ian Barbour, "Paradigms in Science and Religion," in Paradigms and Revolutions, ed. by Gary Gutting, Notre Dame, Indiana University Press, 1980, pp. 223-245 for a thesis demonstrating similarities between adherence to a theological religious creed and a school of scientific thought.
9 See Kuhn, Structure of Scientific Revolutions, p. 154 and Paul Feyerabend, "How to Defend Society against Science," Scientific Revolutions, ed. by Ian Hacking, New York, Oxford University Press 1981, p. 165.
10 Wolfgang Stegmuller, "Occidental Theory Change", in Paradigms and Revolutions, ed. Gary Gutting, Notre Dame, University of Notre Dame Press, 1980, p. 87.
11 Ibid., p. 89.
12 E.J. Dijksterhuis, The Mechanization of the World Picture, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1961, pp.154-159.
13 See W.H. Newton Smith, The Rationality of Science, Boston, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981, pp. 148-182.
14 Carl R. Kordig, The Justification of Scientific Change, Dordrecht, D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1971.
15 See Hilary Putnam, Meaning and the Moral Sciences, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978.
16 Richard Boyd, "Realism, Underdetermination, and a Causal Theory of Evidence," Nous, Vol. 7, pp. 1-12.
17 Larry Laudan, Science and Values, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1984, p. 121.
18 Ibid.
19 Ibid., p. 122.
20 Gaston Bachelard, La Formation de l'esprit scientifique—Une contribution à une psychanalyse de la connaissance objective Paris, Vrin, 1972.
21 David Stove, Popper and After—Four Modern Irrationalists, New York, Pergamon Press, 1982.