The Last Writings of Thomas S. Kuhn: Incommensurability in Science by Thomas S. KUHN (review)

IF 0.2 3区 哲学 0 PHILOSOPHY REVIEW OF METAPHYSICS Pub Date : 2023-09-01 DOI:10.1353/rvm.2023.a906820
Jonah N. Schupbach
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Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2022. xlviii + 302 pp. Cloth, $27.50 [End Page 151] When The Structure of Scientific Revolutions was first published in 1962, Kuhn (1922–1996) warned readers that “space limits” forced him to present his views “in an extremely condensed and schematic form.” From the start, Kuhn saw Structure as an essay in need of much more careful elaboration: “This work remains an essay rather than the full-scale book my subject will ultimately demand.” He endeavored to complete such a book late in his life but sadly died before completing the work. Nonetheless, we may gather a good sense of what this more careful study would have included by piecing together some important unpublished lecture notes and working drafts that he left behind. In The Last Writings of Thomas S. Kuhn: Incommensurability in Science, editor Bojana Mladenović collects the most important three of these previously unpublished writings, making them generally available for the first time. The bulk of the collection is taken up by the working draft (about two-thirds complete) of the book itself. This is preceded by two finished works that lend framing to that draft. In the essay “Scientific Knowledge as Historical Product” (1986), Kuhn contrasts his developmental approach to the epistemology and history of science with the traditional foundationalist approach it seeks to displace. “The Presence of Past Science” (1987) summarizes Kuhn’s mature views on the history and philosophy of scientific development, canvasing much of the same terrain as the book was to cover in more detail. The collection also includes an introduction and abstracts by Mladenović, in which she provides context for the three writings, relates their themes, and fills in the blanks regarding the likely contents of unfinished chapters. Like Structure, these works argue against the alethic stance that science progresses by accumulating progressively more truths. Also as in Structure, Kuhn denies that this amounts to rejecting science’s cognitive authority or a legitimate sense in which science may be said to progress. Indeed, Kuhn claims that it is by understanding the incoherence of an alethic account that we gain a more accurate understanding of science’s real cognitive authority and progress. It is Kuhn’s more elaborate explanation and defense of this claim that distinguishes these last writings. As suggested by this collection’s subtitle, the central concept in Kuhn’s developed account is incommensurability. Kuhn goes beyond Structure’s more cursory remarks on incommensurability of paradigms, according to which different meanings assigned to terms lead to a breakdown of communication between normal-scientific traditions. On Kuhn’s developed account, semantic shifts still play a part in understanding scientific development, but the locus of these is specifically taxonomic or “kind terms.” “Holistic alterations of kind terms” (or “lexical redesigns”) indicate more fundamental, prelinguistic changes in ontology. Science develops by a sequence of such reconceptualizations of the world. As fundamental ontology changes, so does the taxonomic lexicon we use to communicate about the world. Scientific traditions are incommensurable when they cluster taxonomic kinds in fundamentally incompatible ways. [End Page 152] Languages are incommensurable when claims expressible using one language’s lexicon are in principle inexpressible (“untranslatable”) using the lexicon of the other. One of the most striking ways in which Kuhn carefully steps back from well-known claims in Structure is in his reluctance to speak of scientific changes as revolutionary paradigm shifts. Indeed, Kuhn abandons talk of “paradigms” and “revolutions” altogether in his developed account. Kuhn’s earlier notion of a paradigm was repeatedly criticized for being polysemic, his use of the term correspondingly ambiguous (see Kuhn, “Second thoughts on paradigms,” in The Essential Tension, 1977). Accepting these criticisms, Kuhn sets his most famous concept aside and replaces it with the more precise notion of a structured kind set—a tradition’s lexicon of kind terms, corresponding to its ontological “clustering” of the world. Ontological reconceptualizations and lexical redesigns then take the place of revolutionary paradigm shifts. 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Abstract

Reviewed by: The Last Writings of Thomas S. Kuhn: Incommensurability in Science by Thomas S. KUHN Jonah N. Schupbach KUHN, Thomas S. The Last Writings of Thomas S. Kuhn: Incommensurability in Science. Edited by Bojana Mladenović. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2022. xlviii + 302 pp. Cloth, $27.50 [End Page 151] When The Structure of Scientific Revolutions was first published in 1962, Kuhn (1922–1996) warned readers that “space limits” forced him to present his views “in an extremely condensed and schematic form.” From the start, Kuhn saw Structure as an essay in need of much more careful elaboration: “This work remains an essay rather than the full-scale book my subject will ultimately demand.” He endeavored to complete such a book late in his life but sadly died before completing the work. Nonetheless, we may gather a good sense of what this more careful study would have included by piecing together some important unpublished lecture notes and working drafts that he left behind. In The Last Writings of Thomas S. Kuhn: Incommensurability in Science, editor Bojana Mladenović collects the most important three of these previously unpublished writings, making them generally available for the first time. The bulk of the collection is taken up by the working draft (about two-thirds complete) of the book itself. This is preceded by two finished works that lend framing to that draft. In the essay “Scientific Knowledge as Historical Product” (1986), Kuhn contrasts his developmental approach to the epistemology and history of science with the traditional foundationalist approach it seeks to displace. “The Presence of Past Science” (1987) summarizes Kuhn’s mature views on the history and philosophy of scientific development, canvasing much of the same terrain as the book was to cover in more detail. The collection also includes an introduction and abstracts by Mladenović, in which she provides context for the three writings, relates their themes, and fills in the blanks regarding the likely contents of unfinished chapters. Like Structure, these works argue against the alethic stance that science progresses by accumulating progressively more truths. Also as in Structure, Kuhn denies that this amounts to rejecting science’s cognitive authority or a legitimate sense in which science may be said to progress. Indeed, Kuhn claims that it is by understanding the incoherence of an alethic account that we gain a more accurate understanding of science’s real cognitive authority and progress. It is Kuhn’s more elaborate explanation and defense of this claim that distinguishes these last writings. As suggested by this collection’s subtitle, the central concept in Kuhn’s developed account is incommensurability. Kuhn goes beyond Structure’s more cursory remarks on incommensurability of paradigms, according to which different meanings assigned to terms lead to a breakdown of communication between normal-scientific traditions. On Kuhn’s developed account, semantic shifts still play a part in understanding scientific development, but the locus of these is specifically taxonomic or “kind terms.” “Holistic alterations of kind terms” (or “lexical redesigns”) indicate more fundamental, prelinguistic changes in ontology. Science develops by a sequence of such reconceptualizations of the world. As fundamental ontology changes, so does the taxonomic lexicon we use to communicate about the world. Scientific traditions are incommensurable when they cluster taxonomic kinds in fundamentally incompatible ways. [End Page 152] Languages are incommensurable when claims expressible using one language’s lexicon are in principle inexpressible (“untranslatable”) using the lexicon of the other. One of the most striking ways in which Kuhn carefully steps back from well-known claims in Structure is in his reluctance to speak of scientific changes as revolutionary paradigm shifts. Indeed, Kuhn abandons talk of “paradigms” and “revolutions” altogether in his developed account. Kuhn’s earlier notion of a paradigm was repeatedly criticized for being polysemic, his use of the term correspondingly ambiguous (see Kuhn, “Second thoughts on paradigms,” in The Essential Tension, 1977). Accepting these criticisms, Kuhn sets his most famous concept aside and replaces it with the more precise notion of a structured kind set—a tradition’s lexicon of kind terms, corresponding to its ontological “clustering” of the world. Ontological reconceptualizations and lexical redesigns then take the place of revolutionary paradigm shifts. Far from being...
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托马斯·库恩的最后著作:科学中的不可通约性(评论)
《托马斯·库恩的最后著作:科学中的不可通约性》作者:托马斯·库恩,托马斯·s·库恩《托马斯·s·库恩的最后著作:科学中的不可通约性》Bojana mladenovic编辑。芝加哥:芝加哥大学出版社,2022。当《科学革命的结构》于1962年首次出版时,库恩(1922-1996)警告读者,“篇幅限制”迫使他“以极其简明扼要的形式”呈现自己的观点。从一开始,库恩就认为《结构》是一篇需要更仔细阐述的文章:“这部作品仍然是一篇文章,而不是我的主题最终需要的完整的书。”他努力在晚年完成这样一本书,但遗憾地在完成之前去世了。尽管如此,我们可以通过拼凑他留下的一些重要的未发表的课堂笔记和工作草稿,对这个更仔细的研究可能包括的内容有一个很好的认识。在《托马斯·库恩的最后著作:科学中的不可通约性》一书中,编辑Bojana mladenovic收集了这些以前未发表的作品中最重要的三篇,使它们首次被广泛使用。藏书的大部分是由书本身的工作草稿(大约完成了三分之二)占据的。在此之前,有两件完成的作品为该草案提供了框架。在《作为历史产物的科学知识》(1986)一文中,库恩将他的认识论和科学史的发展方法与它试图取代的传统基础主义方法进行了对比。《过去科学的存在》(1987年)总结了库恩对科学发展的历史和哲学的成熟观点,与本书要更详细地介绍的内容大体相同。该文集还包括姆拉德诺维奇的介绍和摘要,她在其中提供了三部作品的背景,联系了它们的主题,并填补了关于未完成章节可能内容的空白。和《结构》一样,这些作品反对科学通过积累越来越多的真理而进步的真性立场。正如在《结构》一书中一样,库恩否认这等于拒绝科学的认知权威,或拒绝科学可能被称为进步的合法意义。事实上,库恩声称,正是通过理解真性描述的不连贯性,我们才能更准确地理解科学真正的认知权威和进步。正是库恩对这一观点的更详尽的解释和辩护,使这些最后的著作与众不同。正如这本书的副标题所暗示的那样,库恩的发展描述的中心概念是不可通约性。库恩超越了结构对范式不可通约性的粗略评论,根据该评论,赋予术语的不同含义导致正常科学传统之间交流的崩溃。根据库恩的发展描述,语义转换在理解科学发展方面仍然发挥着作用,但这些变化的中心是具体的分类术语或“类术语”。“类术语的整体改变”(或“词汇重新设计”)表明本体论中更根本的、前语言的变化。科学就是通过一系列这样的对世界的重新概念化而发展起来的。随着基本本体的变化,我们用来交流世界的分类词汇也在变化。当科学传统以根本不相容的方式聚类分类学种类时,它们是不可通约的。当使用一种语言的词汇可表达的主张原则上使用另一种语言的词汇不可表达(“不可翻译”)时,语言是不可通约的。库恩小心翼翼地从《结构》中著名的主张中后退的最引人注目的方式之一是,他不愿将科学变化称为革命性的范式转变。事实上,库恩在他的长篇叙述中完全放弃了“范式”和“革命”的说法。库恩早期的范式概念被反复批评为多义性,他对这个术语的使用也相应含糊不清(见库恩,“对范式的第二种思考”,《本质张力》,1977年)。接受这些批评后,库恩把他最著名的概念放在一边,代之以更精确的结构化类集概念——一种传统的类术语词典,与世界的本体论“聚类”相对应。本体论的重新概念化和词汇的重新设计取代了革命性的范式转变。远非……
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来源期刊
REVIEW OF METAPHYSICS
REVIEW OF METAPHYSICS PHILOSOPHY-
CiteScore
0.50
自引率
33.30%
发文量
3
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