Volume 57, June 2016, Pages 17–26
Special Issue: Reappraising Feyerabend
Highlights
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- Einstein uses ‘incommensurable’ to describe challenges to comparing theories over a decade before Feyerabend and Kuhn.
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- Kuhn and Feyerabend develop Einstein's views, albeit in different directions.
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- Einstein describes revolutions as conceptual replacements, endorsing ‘Kant-on-wheels’ metaphysics in and ‘world change’.
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- Kuhn and Feyerabend were inspired by Einstein's methodological and philosophical reflections.
Abstract
Thomas
Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend promote incommensurability as a central
component of their conflicting accounts of the nature of science. This
paper argues that in so doing, they both develop Albert Einstein's
views, albeit in different directions. Einstein describes scientific
revolutions as conceptual replacements, not mere revisions, endorsing
‘Kant-on-wheels’ metaphysics in light of ‘world change’. Einstein
emphasizes underdetermination of theory by evidence, rational
disagreement in theory choice, and the non-neutrality of empirical
evidence. Einstein even uses the term ‘incommensurable’ specifically to
apply to challenges posed to comparatively evaluating scientific
theories in 1949, more than a decade before Kuhn and Feyerabend. This
analysis shows how Einstein anticipates substantial components of Kuhn
and Feyerabend's views, and suggests that there are strong reasons to
suspect that Kuhn and Feyerabend were directly inspired by Einstein's
use of the term ‘incommensurable’, as well as his more general
methodological and philosophical reflections.
Keywords
- Einstein;
- Feyerabend;
- Incommensurability;
- Kant;
- Kuhn;
- Underdetermination
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