In the last two sections of Structure, Thomas Kuhn first develops his famous threefold conception of the incommensurability of scientific paradigms and, subsequently, a conception of scientific progress as growth of empirical strength. The latter conception seems to be at odds with the former in that semantic incommensurability appears to imply the existence of situations where scientific progress in Kuhns sense can no longer exist. In contrast to this seeming inconsistency of Kuhns conception, we will try to show in this (...) study that the semantic incommensurability of scientific terms appears to be fully compatible with scientific progress. Our argumentation is based on an improved version of the formalization of Kuhns conception as developed in the 1970s by Joseph Sneed and Wolfgang Stegmüller: In order to be comparable, incommensurable theories need the specification of relations that refer to the concrete ontologies of these theories and involve certain truth claims. The original structuralist account of reduction fails to provide such relations, because (1) it is too structural and (2) it is too wide. Moreover, the original structuralist account also fails to cover important cases of incommensurable theories in being too restrictive for them. In this paper, we develop an improved notion of “reduction” that allows us to avoid these shortcomings by means of a more flexible device for the formalization of (partially reductive) relations between theories. For that purpose, we use a framework of rigid logic, i.e., logic that is based on a fixed collection of objects. (shrink)

In this paper, a modest version of the Semantic View is motivated as both tenable and potentially fruitful for philosophy of science. An analysis is proposed in which the Semantic View is characterized by three main claims. For each of these claims, a distinction is made between stronger and more modest interpretations. It is argued that the criticisms recently leveled against the Semantic View hold only under the stronger interpretations of these claims. However, if one only commits to the modest (...) interpretation for all the claims, then the view obtained, the Modest Semantic View, is tenable and fruitful for the philosophy of science. (shrink)

We begin by highlighting some points related to Kuhn’s later thoughts on the incommensurability thesis and then show to what extent the standard version of the thesis given by the structuralist metatheory allows us to capture Kuhn’s ideas. Our main aim is to establish what constitutes the basis of comparability between incommensurable theories, even in cases of incommensurability with respect to theoretical and non-theoretical terms. We propose that comparability between incommensurable theories requires some connection between their respective ontologies that can (...) be captured by means of an ontological non-reductive relation. At this point, the structuralist notion of “echeloned partial substructure” may be of help. When the incommensurability is very drastic, the existence of ontological connections between the theories involved may only be evident by common terms of their non-characteristic vocabularies. So, this notion of non-characteristic vocabulary becomes relevant in our proposal. (shrink)

All suggested notions of reduction of two scientific theories are critically reviewed and analyzed. In particular those applied to the case of the alleged reduction of Chemistry to Quantum mechanics are examined. Since it is recognized that the weakness of this field of research is the lack of a definition of a scientific theory, it is suggested that a scientific theory is characterized by two choices regarding two dichotomies, that is, the kind of mathematics and the kind of logic. According (...) to this view a reduction is only possible between two theories in which the same choices are shared. As a consequence, only one case of reduction in the history of physics is recognized: physical optics to electromagnetism, a case that is commonly accepted. The other cases of claimed reductions are recognized as impossible, owing to the different choices of the two theories at issue and hence the radical variations in meaning of their shared basic notions. In particular, the claimed reduction of Chemistry to Quantum mechanics is disproved in detail. (shrink)