Perspectives on Science 9 (4):463-498 (2001)
Authors | |
Abstract |
Incommensurability between successive scientific theories—the impossibility of empirical evidence dictating the choice between them—was Thomas Kuhn's most controversial proposal. Toward defending it, he directed much effort over his last 30 years into formulating precise conditions under which two theories would be undeniably incommensurable with one another. His first step, in the late 1960s, was to argue that incommensurability must result when two theories involve incompatible taxonomies. The problem he then struggled with, never obtaining a solution that he found entirely satisfactory, was how to extend this initial line of thought to sciences like physics in which taxonomy is not so transparently dominant as it is, for example, in chemistry. This paper reconsiders incommensurability in the light of examples in which evidence historically did and did not carry over continuously from old laws and theories to new ones. The transition from ray to wave optics early in the nineteenth century, we argue, is especially informative in this regard. The evidence for the theory of polarization within ray optics did not carry over to wave optics, so that this transition can be regarded as a prototypical case of discontinuity of evidence, and hence of incommensurability in the way Kuhn wanted. Yet the evidence for classic geometric optics did carry over to wave optics, notwithstanding the fundamental conceptual readjustment that Fresnel's wave theory required.
|
Keywords | No keywords specified (fix it) |
Categories | (categorize this paper) |
DOI | 10.1162/106361401760375839 |
Options |
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
Download options
References found in this work BETA
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.Thomas Samuel Kuhn - 1962 - Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
The Essential Tension. Selected Studies in Scientific Tradition and Change.Ian Hacking & Thomas S. Kuhn - 1977 - History and Theory 18 (2):223.
The Road Since Structure: Philosophical Essays, 1970-1993, with an Autobiographical Interview.Thomas S. Kuhn & Jim Conant - 2000 - University of Chicago Press.
Kinds and the Wave Theory of Light.Jed Z. Buchwald - 1991 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 23 (1):39-74.
View all 10 references / Add more references
Citations of this work BETA
What 'Biological Racial Realism' Should Mean.Quayshawn Spencer - 2012 - Philosophical Studies 159 (2):181-204.
The Classical Roots of Wave Mechanics: Schrödinger's Transformations of the Optical-Mechanical Analogy.Christian Joas & Christoph Lehner - 2009 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 40 (4):338-351.
Paradigm Change in Evolutionary Microbiology.Maureen A. O’Malley & Yan Boucher - 2005 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 36 (1):183-208.
Paradigm Change in Evolutionary Microbiology.Maureen A. O’Malley & Yan Boucher - 2005 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 36 (1):183-208.
View all 6 citations / Add more citations
Similar books and articles
Incommensurability in Cognitive Guise.Muhammad Ali Khalidi - 1998 - Philosophical Psychology 11 (1):29 – 43.
Incommensurability.Harold I. Brown - 1983 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 26 (1):3 – 29.
Kuhn, Incommensurability, and Cognitive Science.Peter Barker - 2001 - Perspectives on Science 9 (4):433-462.
Pragmatic Incommensurability.John Collier - 1984 - PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1984:146 - 153.
Object and Event Concepts: A Cognitive Mechanism of Incommensurability.Xiang Chen - 2003 - Philosophy of Science 70 (5):962-974.
Theories Between Theories: Asymptotic Limiting Intertheoretic Relations.Robert W. Batterman - 1995 - Synthese 103 (2):171 - 201.
Kuhn's Changing Concept of Incommensurability.Howard Sankey - 1993 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 44 (4):759-774.
Multisemiosis and Incommensurability.S. K. Arun Murthi & Sundar Sarukkai - 2009 - International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 23 (3):297-311.
Analytics
Added to PP index
2009-01-28
Total views
99 ( #119,648 of 2,519,863 )
Recent downloads (6 months)
1 ( #406,012 of 2,519,863 )
2009-01-28
Total views
99 ( #119,648 of 2,519,863 )
Recent downloads (6 months)
1 ( #406,012 of 2,519,863 )
How can I increase my downloads?
Downloads