Kuhn's "Paradigm" Theory: Inheritance And Advancement Of Late Wittgenstein' Thought Of Language Game

In the 1930s, Wittgenstein'philosophical thinking took an important turn, from the early theory of logical image to the later theory of language game, in other words, turned into analyze language from the relation of language and daily life, emphasized some features that language's dependence of the form of life, conventions of language communication, and contextuality of language's used. All these advanced late postmodernism's birth, at the same time, this turn about philosophy of language had profound influence to later philosophical circles.In the early 1960s, the science philosopher of the United States Thomas Kuhn published his book on "The Structure of Scientific Revolution", which brought him not only reputation, but also disputation because of polysemy and ambiguity of "paradigm" he addressed. In order to avoid the mistake, the other words, such as "lexicon", were used to replace the "paradigm". But his theory didn't change, and those words didn't as popular as he hoped. "Paradigm" popularized and infiltrated into other fields, at the same time, paradigm's incommensurability, subjectivity, and many concepts include science communities and science revolution which related with paradigm were popular, And influenced the development of the postmodernism so much that, postmodernists treat Kuhn as their pioneer. The theories of these two philosophers are extensive and profound that can't analysis comprehensively and deeply in this paper, so only put some representative concepts on emphasis. On the basis of organizing important concepts of Wittgenstein'thought of language game, analyze its influence on postmodernism, and give a deep understanding about Kuhn.'s understanding about late Wittgenstein'thought, then, elaborate that "paradigm" theory is an inheritance and develop of the thought of language game, mainly about the aspects of incommensurability, subjectivity, contextuality and influence on postmodernism. Writer hopes that through holding the development of two philosophers'theories, to facilitate us understand philosophy's development among the 20C, especially to language philosophy and science philosophy, at the same time, facilitate us to research popular contextualism in science philosophy deeply.