Conditions of Progress and the Comparability of Theories

Abstract

I believe that there is progress and continuity in the development of physics. This is perhaps the deepest prejudice standing behind the considerations in this paper. As is well known, it has become necessary to defend this view if one belongs among its advocates because for some time past it is exposed to heavy fire from the guns of Thomas Kuhn and Feyerabend, — to mention only the two most effective champions of the ‘new movement’ in the philosophy of science. But I believe in meaning change, too. Therefore my chief problem is: How will a successful defense be possible? For several reasons I am unsatisfied with most of the reactions coming from the logical empiricist camp, the main reason being perhaps that their argumentation is too remote from the concrete difficulties presenting themselves, for instance, in trying to compare quantum mechanics or the theory of relativity with their classical predecessors. Such difficulties were pointed out by Feyerabend, but I cannot find any direct answers to them in the aforementioned reactions. The matter is different with Lakatos in so far as his methodology of scientific research programmes is a positive attempt to find a criterion for scientific progress. But a thoroughgoing elaboration of this methodology would bring to view that it can not simply outflank the difficulties of Feyerabend’s incommensurability type.