HPS250H1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Falsifiability, Imre Lakatos, Geographic Coordinate System
7 Apr 2018
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Lecture 7: Imre Lakatos
Incommensurability and Incomparability:
Translatability requirement: in order to be comparable, 2 competing theories must employ mutually
translatable taxonomies
Incommensurability: competing theories can employ untranslatable taxonomies, i.e. they can be
incommensurable
= Incomparability: it is not always possible to compare 2 competing theories
Is there always a way to compare competing research programmes (competing paradigms)?
No: Incomparability Thesis
Yes: Comparability Thesis
It is not always possible to compare 2 competing
research paradigms. Taxonomies of competing
theories are often incommensurable.
It is always possible to compare 2 competing
research paradigms – incommensurability is not a
serious obstacle for theory comparison.
Incommensurability Example: Addresses
• Western addressing system vs. Japanese addressing system
• They employ different taxonomies, but any address can be converted from one to another =
geographic coordinate system
Example: Physics
• Aristotelian physics vs. Newtonian physics
• They were employed at different times because they had different criteria and taxonomies
Comparability: it is always possible to compare competing theories
• It is possible to compare 2 competing theories only when their predictions are expressible in a
common language
• Predictions of competing theories are expressible in a common language even when the
theories themselves are incommensurable
Pierre Duhem: scientific experiments are completely interpenetrated by theoretical interpretation, to
the point where it becomes impossible to express fact in isolation from theory. Thus, it is impossible to
test an individual scientific proposition
Duhem Thesis/Holism of Theory Testing/Non-separability: an individual theoretical proposition has no
empirical consequences and cannot be tested in isolation
Non-falsifiability: an individual theoretical proposition is not falsifiable
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