Evolution Of The Theory Of Incommensurability In Kuhn’s Paradigm

Kuhn took the scientific development as the associative product of normal science and scientific revolution. With scientific revolution of Kuhn, the conversion between the new and the old paradigm has changed, but the change produced an argument of incommensurability. The cause leading to incommensurability can be roughly classified into two categories:one is that the conversion between the new and the old paradigm will cause opposition to each other between the new and the old scientific community. The other is that disagreement on the same issue in a plurality of groups during the same period has become stick-to-his-own-view community. In the Structure, Kuhn points out two methods to eliminate the incommensurability. One is the change of religion, the other is extinction. Although Kuhn eliminated incommensurability among the scientific community with Gestalt switch type conversion when the paradigm conversion happened. However, he ignored the existence of internal differences in the the inheritance of paradigm of the scientific community. These differences will be outstanding after the scientific revolution formed normal by the new paradigm construction. Therefore, in the new stage of normal science, incommensurability appearing inside the scientific community mainly showed at three aspects:theoretical differences of subject differentiation, difference of scientific methods effected by institutionalization and specialization, and the new rules found by scientists in the puzzle-solve activities. After writing the Structure, Kuhn turned the methods of eliminating incommensurability to the linguistics and hoped to eliminate adverse consequences caused by it through language learning. Although learning can eliminate incommensurability of contemporaneous terms of different scientific community, it is difficult to eliminate the gap produced when a same terms changed with historical ideas. In his later years, after Kuhn experienced linguistic turning and incommensurability of community caused by the internal differentiation of subjects, he began to reexamine the essence of scientific revolution. He temporarily put aside the inter individual incommensurability, and then regarded the historical development of science as a complete historical system. He integrated the concept of truth and incommensurability, regarded entirety and historic of truth as general principles, controlled disciplines and specialties and individual differences existing in the scientific community. Therefore, Kuhn’s incommensurability is actually not so intense as the original paradigm shifting. The contradictions have eased up. In other words, incommensurability in Kuhn’s theory of paradigm has not been completely eliminated, but been dispelled.