In his mature works, Kuhn abandons the concept of a paradigm and becomes more interested in the analysis of the conceptual structure of scientific theories. These changes are interpreted as resulting from a ‘linguistic turn’ that Kuhn underwent sometimes around the 1980s. Much of the philosophical discussions about Kuhn’s post-‘linguistic turn’ philosophy revolves around his views on taxonomic concepts. Apart from taxonomy, however, the mature Kuhn introduces other concepts, such as conceptual networks and lexicons. This article distinguishes these three concepts (...) and shows that adopting each one of them has different impacts on Kuhn’s model of science. After distinguishing and assessing the concepts of taxonomy, network, and lexicon, it will be argued that the latter not only fits the Kuhnian model of science better, but it also helps capture the wide sense of Kuhn’s early concept of a paradigm. (shrink)

Up to the introduction of the term and concept of incommensurability by T. S. Kuhn and P. K. Feyerabend in the early 1960s, scientific texts were supposed to pose no problem as regards their translation, unlike literature, which was thought very difficult to translate. After the introduction of the term, translation of scientific language became equally problematic because, due to conceptual and perceptual incommensurability, there was no common observation basis to ground linguistic equivalences between languages of incommensurable paradigms. This article (...) highlights the presuppositions that link incommensurability to dramatic consequences (impossibility of communication, translation, and comparative evaluation of paradigms) and tries to sketch an alternative way of understanding incommensurability and translation drawing on Kuhn’s work. From this perspective, translation is not an all-or-nothing affair for either science or literature and becomes a problem to be solved for each particular set of circumstances. (shrink)

Friedman’s perspective on scientific change is a sophisticated attempt to combine Kantian transcendental philosophy and the Kuhnian historiographical model. In this article, I will argue that Friedman’s account, despite its virtues, fails to achieve the philosophical goals that it self-consciously sets, namely to unproblematically combine the revolutionary perspective of scientific development and the neo-Kantian philosophical framework. As I attempt to show, the impossibility of putting together these two aspects stems from the incompatibility between Friedman’s neo-Kantian conception of the role of (...) philosophy and the role of the notion of incommensurability, and the framework of transcendental idealism and the radical character of scientific revolutions. Hence, I suggest that pace Friedman and pace Kuhn’s own self-understanding, the Kuhnian theory of scientific revolutions cannot be seen as ‘Kantianism with moveable categories’ and consequently we should either abandon the notion of radical scientific revolution or place the Kuhnian account into another, non-Kantian philosophical framework. (shrink)