Volume 51, Issue 13, December 2019, Page 1293-1303.

Whereas there is much discussion about Thomas Kuhn’s notion of methodological incommensurability and many have seen his ideas as an attempt to allow for rational disagreement in science, so far no serious analysis of how exactly Kuhn aims to account for rational disagreement has been proposed. This paper provides the first in-depth analysis of Kuhn’s account of rational disagreement in science—an account that can be seen as the most prominent attempt to allow for rational disagreement in science. Three things will (...) be shown: First, we find not one, but two accounts of rational disagreements in science in Kuhn’s writings: one stemming from methodological incommensurability and one stemming from Kuhn-underdetermination, which are not only fundamentally different—the first purports to explain how disagreeing scientists can nevertheless be rational, while the second attempts to show how rational scientists can nevertheless disagree—but appear to be incompatible with each other. Second, I will assess both accounts. Kuhn’s account from methodological incommensurability is not convincing since it cannot explain rational disagreement in science. Whereas, on the other hand, Kuhn’s account from Kuhn-underdetermination allows for rational disagreement, his argument why we should accept it is not convincing. Third, I present a tentative sketch of an alternative to Kuhn’s account that emphasizes the fallibility of epistemic justification in order to show that Kuhn’s argument founders. In sum, the paper shows that focusing not on the muchly debated consequences of methodological incommensurability, but on Kuhn’s treatment of rational disagreement gives new insight into the adequate interpretation of his thought as well as the cogency of his ideas. (shrink)

This article takes issue with Kuhn’s description of the ‘Aristotle experience,’ an event that took place in 1947 and that he retrospectively characterized as a revelation that instantly delivered to him the key concepts of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962). We trace a certain transformation of this narrative over time: whereas it commenced from a description of his impression of disparity between the textbook image of science and the study of historical sources, Kuhn started to characterize it as a (...) revelation after learning of the English translation of Fleck’s 1935 Entstehung und Entwicklung einer wissenschaftlichen Tatsache. This book anticipates many central Kuhnian claims. Kuhn read it as early as 1949, but never fully acknowledged it as a source of inspiration. We discuss four hypotheses concerning the possible influence of Fleck’s theory on Kuhn’s in light of the available evidence. We conclude that the degree of similarity between them is too great to be coincidental. (shrink)