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Ontological and Terminological Commitment and the Methodological Commensurability of Theories

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2022

Scott A. Kleiner
Scott A. Kleiner*
Affiliation:
University of Georgia
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Extract

Scientific revolutions have been described as episodes in the history of science in which old empirical research activities, standards of achievement, problem fields and even ontologies have been exchanged for new (Kuhn, 1962; Feyerabend, 1962).

Also it has been claimed that rational canons for the evaluation of theories cannot reach across scientific revolutions. The revolutionary new theory can be defended only by rhetorical techniques, not by hypothetico-deductive or other inductive argumentation to or from empirically ascertained evidence. A revolutionary new theory achieves dominance over its predecessor only after the authority sustaining the latter theory is no longer effective. Thus, succeeding theories in scientific revolutions are held to be methodologically incommensurable. That is, logical argumentation cannot be used to assign differential values to succeeding theories.

A superficial examination of what it means for two theories to differ ontologically might lead to the conclusion that theories so differing are methodologically incommensurable.

Type
Contributed Papers
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1970 , 1970 , pp. 507 - 518
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1970

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