Two questions should be considered when assessing the Kantian dimensions of Kuhn’s thought. First, was Kuhn himself a Kantian? Second, did Kuhn have an influence on later Kantians and neo-Kantians? Kuhn mentioned Kant as an inspiration, and his focus on explanatory frameworks and on the conditions of knowledge appear Kantian. But Kuhn’s emphasis on learning; on activities of symbolization; on paradigms as practical, not just theoretical; and on the social and community aspects of scientific research as constitutive of scientific reasoning, (...) are all outside the Kantian perspective. Kuhn’s admiration for Kant is tempered by his desire to understand the processes of learning, of initiation into a scientific community, of experimentation using instruments, and of persuasion, drawing on the work of familiar influences, including Piaget, Koyré, and Wittgenstein, and less familiar ones, including Langer, Demos, and Frank. Both Kuhn and Kant were interested in the question: what is the status of science, and what is the role of the scientist in its development and justification? But Kuhn presents science in a much more messy, historically contingent, and socially charged way than Kant does. The paper’s conclusion evaluates Kuhn’s reception among researchers including Richardson and Friedman, assessing the prospects for future work. (shrink)

In his mature writings, Kuhn describes the process of specialisation as driven by a form of incommensurability, defined as a conceptual/linguistic barrier which promotes and guarantees the insularity of specialties. In this paper, we reject the idea that the incommensurability among scientific specialties is a linguistic barrier. We argue that the problem with Kuhn’s characterisation of the incommensurability among specialties is that he presupposes a rather abstract theory of semantic incommensurability, which he then tries to apply to his description of (...) the process of specialisation. By contrast, this paper follows a different strategy: after criticising Kuhn’s view, it takes a further look at how new scientific specialties emerge. As a result, a different way of understanding incommensurability among specialties will be proposed. (shrink)

Incommensurability may be regarded as driving specialisation, on the one hand, and as posing some problems to interdisciplinarity, on the other hand. It may be argued, however, that incommensurability plays no role in either specialisation or interdisciplinarity. Scientific specialties could be defined as simply 'different' (that is, about different things), rather than 'incommensurable' (that is, competing for the explanation of the same phenomena). Interdisciplinarity could be viewed as the co- ordinated effort of scientists possessing complemetary and interlocking skills, and not (...) as the overcoming of some sort of incommensurable divide. This article provides a comprehensive evaluative examination of the relations between specialisation, interdisciplinarity, and incommensurability. Its aim is to defend the relevance of incommensurability to both specialisation and interdisciplinarity. At the same time, it aims at correcting the tendency, common among many philosophers, to regard incommensurability in a restrictive manner - such as, for example, as an almost purely semantic issue. (shrink)

Alexander Bird indicates that the significance of Thomas Kuhn in the history of philosophy of science is somehow paradoxical. On the one hand, Kuhn was one of the most influential and important philosophers of science in the second half of the twentieth century. On the other hand, nowadays there is little distinctively Kuhn’s legacy in the sense that most of Kuhn’s work has no longer any philosophical significance. Bird argues that the explanation of the paradox of Kuhn’s legacy is that (...) Kuhn took a direction opposite to that of the mainstream of the philosophy of science in his later academic career. This paper aims to provide a new way to understand and develop Kuhn’s legacy by revisiting the development of Kuhn’s philosophy of science in 1970s and proposing a new account of exemplar. Firstly, I propose my diagnosis of Kuhn’s “wrong turning” by identifying Kuhn’s two novel contributions: the introduction of paradigm and the proposal of the incommensurability thesis. Secondly, I argue that Kuhn made a conceptual/terminological turn from paradigm to theory, which undermined Kuhn’s novel contributions. Thirdly, I propose a new articulation of exemplar and propose an exemplar-based approach to analysing the history of science. Finally, I show how the exemplar-based approach can be applied to analyse the history of science by my case study of the early development of genetics. (shrink)

In this article, I explore the value of philosophy of science for history of science. I start by introducing a distinction between two ways of integrating history and philosophy of science: historical philosophy of science and philosophical history of science. I then offer a critical discussion of Imre Lakatos’s project to bring philosophy of science to bear on historical interpretation. I point out certain flaws in Lakatos’s project, which I consider indicative of what went wrong with PHS in the past. (...) Finally, I put forward my own attempt to bring out the historiographical potential of philosophy of science. Starting from Norwood Russell Hanson’s insight that historical studies of science involve metascientific concepts, I argue that philosophical reflection on those concepts can be historiographically fruitful. I focus on four issues and discuss their significance and utility for historiographical practice. (shrink)

In his late years, Thomas Kuhn became interested in the process of scientific specialization, which does not seem to possess the destructive element that is characteristic of scientific revolutions. It therefore makes sense to investigate whether and how Kuhn’s insights about specialization are consistent with, and actually fit, his model of scientific progress through revolutions. In this paper, I argue that the transition toward a new specialty corresponds to a revolutionary change for the group of scientists involved in such a (...) transition. I will clarify the role of the scientific community in revolutionary changes and characterize the incommensurability across specialties as possessing both semantic and methodological aspects. The discussion of the discovery of the structure of DNA will serve both as an illustration of my main argument and as reply to one criticism raised against Kuhn—namely, that his model cannot capture cases of revolutionary yet non-disruptive episodes of scientific progress. Revisiting Kuhn’s ideas on specialization will shed new light on some often overlooked features of scientific change. (shrink)

In this article, we provide a detailed discussion of Hasok Chang’s analysis of the Chemical Revolution. Our focus lies on his use of the framework of systems of practice and his claim that the abandonment of the phlogiston theory was irrational. We argue that his framework runs into problems when applied to the chemical revolution because of its static view on the aims of the historical actors and we suggest using Nicholas Jardine’s concept of the reality of questions instead as (...) a more flexible historiographical tool. We show how Chang’s claim regarding the irrational aspects of the chemical revolution follows from his strictly individualistic epistemology, leading him to see institutional and social aspects that impact the determination of aims as external to scientific rationality. We argue that a viable pragmatist and pluralist philosophy of science needs to embrace ‘academic politics’ as an explicit part of its view of rationality. (shrink)

In this paper, we analyze the debate between the Modern Synthesis and the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis in light of the concept of incommensurability developed by Thomas Kuhn. In order to do so, first we briefly present both the Modern Synthesis and the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis. Then, we clarify the meaning and interpretations of incommensurability throughout Kuhn’s works, concluding that the version of this concept deployed in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is the best suited to the analysis of scientific disputes. (...) After discussing incommensurability in Kuhn’s works, we address the question of whether the Modern Synthesis and the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis can be considered semantically, methodologically, and ontologically incommensurable, concluding that they can. Finally, we discuss three problems that arise from such a conclusion: firstly, what are the consequences of incommensurability; secondly, which mode of scientific change better explains this current dispute in evolutionary biology; and thirdly, whether rational theory comparison is possible given incommensurability. We suggest that the main consequence of incommensurability is profound disagreement, that the kind of scientific change that better explains the current dispute between the MS and the EES may be scientific specialization, and that incommensurability does not preclude rational theory comparison. (shrink)

According to Kuhn's speciation analogy, scientific specialisation is fundamentally analogous to biological speciation. In this paper, we extend Kuhn's original language-centred formulation of the speciation analogy, to account for episodes of scientific specialisation centred around methodological differences. Building upon recent views in evolutionary biology about the process of speciation by genetic divergence, we will show how these methodology-centred episodes of scientific specialisation can be understood as cases of specialisation driven by value divergence. We will apply our model of specialisation by (...) value divergence to an episode of methodology-centred scientific specialisation: the emergence of molecular biology. (shrink)

Almaatouq et al. claim that the integrative experiment design can help “develop a reliable, cohesive, and cumulative theoretical understanding.” I will contest this claim by challenging three underlying assumptions about the nature of scientific theories. I propose that the integrative experiment design should be viewed as an exploratory framework rather than a means to build or evaluate theories.