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Thomas Kuhn - ( 1922 - 1996 )
Thomas Kuhn is one of, it not the most convincing and influential philosophers of science. He was born on July 18, 1922 and passed on June 17, 1996. He wrote the book, "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" which contained many of influential scientific theories. Incommensurability is one of his most controversial and influential of them all, which is that theories from differing periods of time tend to suffer from certain types of incomparability, in which case causes a ''Paradigm Shift". -
College Life
In 1943, Kuhn graduated from Harvard with a bachelors in physics. In 1946 he obtained his masters degree in physics and also his doctorate in 1949. Soon after Kuhn had been elected into the Society of Fellows at Harvard, where he taught a class of undergraduates in the science of humanities. This led Kuhn to be intrested in history of science and after turning to the history of astronomy, he wrote his first book in 1957, "The Copernican Revolution." -
Kuhns "Incommensurability"
In the Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Kuhn writes about Paradigms and how they shift due to incommensurability. This in his book, "dramatically claims that the history of science reveals proponents of competing paradigms failing to make complete contact with each other’s views, so that they are always talking at least slightly at cross-purposes." ( Eric Oberheim, Paul Hoyningen-Huene ) This is when a current theory compared with one in history can't be compared by any means. -
Impact on the Philosophy of Science
Incommensurability has had a major affect and impact on the Philosophy of Science. Kuhn’s contrasting view is that we judge the quality of a theory (and its treatment of the evidence) by comparing it to a paradigmatic theory. Once the evidence is completely incomparable by any means it will become a crisis and then could lead into a paradigm shift. Incommensurability gives science a reason to open its options to new theories or ways of doing science. Although it's been argued, it holds today. -
Work Cited / Youtube Clip
Bird, Alexander, "Thomas Kuhn", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2018 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2018/entries/thomas-kuhn/. "Incommensurability in Science". In obo in Philosophy. 5 Apr. 2020. https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780195396577/obo-9780195396577-0022.xml. https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Thomas_Samuel_Kuhn# Youtube Clip/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euE7PP_RUfk
