SOC SCI H1G Lecture Notes - Lecture 14: Mind Control, Chiaroscuro, Normal Science
25 Dec 2018
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Just because it is a transition between incommensurables, the transition between competing paradigms cannot be made a step at a time, forced by logical and neutral experience. Kuhn and laudan: so kuhn seems to want to have it both ways on progress: puzzle solutions are sometimes seen as trans-paradigmatic and sometimes not. But he is clearly denying what he sees at the central respect in which science is traditionally thought to be progressive: more closely approximating the truth about nature. Indeed, he finds the very notion illusive in principle : like us, laudan thinks that kuhn has gotten some important things right and seen things that no one else did, but he does not endorse all of kuhn"s account. He accepts kuhn"s historical case against the idea that our theories are converging on the truth about nature, but he denies any strong form of kuhnian incommensurability. Any theory of rationality which discusses only the first two will be incapable.
