Three Justifications For T. S. Kuhn’s Model Of Scientific Progress

Thomas S. Kuhn is the most influencing philosopher of science since from the20th century. He is the most important representative and the most prominent pioneer of the historicism, and his theory has affected the philosophy, science and society significantly for a long time. The main contribution of Kuhn for philosophy of science was that he has invented a plural model of scientific progress which was very different from the classical cumulative model of scientific development. Kuhn’s theory admitted that science was making progress in a rational way which has no definite purpose.But Kuhn’s plural model of scientific progress has suffered many misunderstandings and critics. I have classified these misunderstandings and critics in three sorts:internal realism, incommensurability and evolution analogy, and they all showed the plural feature. All these misunderstandings and critics based on the confusing pluralism and relativism. The first is the internal realism. Kuhn argued these worlds which scientists lived in were contributed by human beings. This is a conception closely linked with incommensurability. Just because Kuhn denied the external realism and supported the internal realism, the incommensurability between paradigms emerged. And some critics who attack his theory think this will lead to ontological relativism, e. g. Howard Sankey2000. The second is the issue of incommensurability. It is the key concept of Kuhn’s theory. Kuhn emphasized that the paradigms (early days) or taxonomical structures (later stage) as the basic units of scientific progress were incommensurability. And the critics argued the incommensurability among paradigms or taxonomic structures will make the comparison and evaluation lose objective standards, as a result, the science will become an irrational action hand in hand with the relativism. The last is the analogy between the scientific progress and biological evolution. Some authors believe the evolution analogy is very important for Kuhn to get rid of the relativism criticized in the later stage, but some critics attack the evolution analogy is inappropriate (Renzi Barbara,2009).We believe that the three types of criticize can be resolved. Firstly, the discarding of external realism is the inevitable consequence of the contemporary science and philosophy. And the disappearance of external realism will not make the science become an irrational action. Secondly, the incommensurability would not lead incomparability. The incommensurable paradigms can be interpreted or communicated through the linguistic learning. And the comparative evaluation without any neutral or simple compute system can be rational. At last, the criticism of the evolution analogy can be resolved through the study of the resemblance between Kuhn’s theory and contemporary biological evolution. So, we hope our study can clarify some misunderstandings of Kuhn’s theory and refute these criticisms about plural model of scientific progress. We believe Kuhn’s model of scientific progress is rational.