A Gadamerian Critique of Kuhn's Linguistic Turn: Incommensurability Revisited

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A Gadamerian Critique of Kuhns

Linguistic Turn: Incommensurability
Revisited
Amani Albedah
Version of record first published: 22 Jan 2007.
To cite this article: Amani Albedah (2006): A Gadamerian Critique of Kuhns Linguistic Turn:
Incommensurability Revisited, International Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 20:3, 323-345
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International Studies in the Philosophy of Science

Vol. 20, No. 3, October 2006, pp. 323345
A Gadamerian Critique of Kuhns

Linguistic Turn: Incommensurability
Revisited
Downloaded by [McGill University Library] at 01:08 15 April 2013
Amani Albedah
30AmaniAlbedah
aalbedah@qualitynet.net
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2006
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10.1080/02698590600961000
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0269-8595
Original
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2006
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In this article, I discuss Gadamers hermeneutic account of understanding as an alternative

to Kuhns incommensurability thesis. After a brief account of Kuhns aesthetic account and
arguments against it, I argue that the linguistic account faces a paradox that results from
Kuhns objectivist account of understanding, and his lack of historical reflexivity. The statement Languages are incommensurable is not a unique view of language, and is thus
subject to contest by incommensurable readings. Resolving the paradox requires an account
of incommensurability that is self-referentially consistent, open-ended, and historically
reflexive whereby we recognize that our very interest in incommensurability is historically
conditioned. By meeting these conditions, Gadamers account of historical understanding
offers a middle ground between two extremes: on the one side is the claim that understanding involves becoming a native of an incommensurable language, and on the other side is
the rejection of the prospect of understanding a contextually removed language altogether.
Gadamer is discussed as a mediator between Kuhns epistemic and historical projects, and
thus paves the way for a new hermeneutics of science. The notions of traditional horizon,
historically effected consciousness, the universality of interpretation, alienation, dialogical
openness, and the fusion of horizons are also discussed.
1. Introduction
Soon after its inception by Paul Feyerabend and Thomas Kuhn, the notion of incommensurability became one of the most fashionable terms of contemporary academic
culture.1 The notion, which denoted the discontinuity or the communicative breakdown between contextually removed traditions, attracted devout supporters and fierce
adversaries alike. Supporters were mainly interested in the possibility of understanding
Amani Albedah is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy, Kuwait University.
Correspondence to: Amani Albedah, Department of Philosophy, Kuwait University, PO Box 13257, 71953,
Kaifan, Kuwait. E-mail: aalbedah@qualitynet.net
ISSN 02698595 (print)/ISSN 14699281 (online) 2006 Inter-University Foundation
DOI: 10.1080/02698590600961000
324
A. Albedah
that cuts right through communicative breakdown, whereas adversaries thought that
the thesis of incommensurability was inherently inconsistent with any notion of understanding and sought to show that the thesis was either false or self-refuting.
In this paper, I offer an analysis of Kuhns failed attempts to bridge the apparent gap
between incommensurability and understanding. By drawing on the affinities between
Kuhn and Hans-Georg Gadamer, I will show that Gadamerian hermeneutics provides
a more apt account of the process of understanding an alien tradition. This account
falls between two extremes: on the one side are Kuhn and his supporters who claim that
understanding an incommensurable worldview is equivalent to becoming a native of
two contextually removed languages; and on the other side are Kuhns adversaries who
reject the possibility of understanding a contextually removed language altogether. By
localizing incommensurability and insisting that incommensurability amounts to a
determinate radical difference between conceptual schemes, Kuhns camp faces what I
shall call the paradox of incommensurability, while his adversaries attack a straw man
by assuming the total absence of overlap between the two languages. Both extremes, I
shall argue, share the presupposition that Gadamer places under attack; namely, that
understanding (and recognizing the state of alienation) is a mirroring of a static and
determinate meaning.
A secondary aim of this paper is to show that despite the divergence between them,
Gadamer and the early Kuhn share a deeper level of agreement than is usually assumed.
Though they were initiated into different philosophical traditions, they belong to the
same historical era and share a main philosophical concern; namely, to offer an account
of knowledge as linguistically, historically, socially, and culturally constituted. Both
oppose traditional analytic philosophy of science with its objectivist project, and both
aim at showing that historical understanding is deeply contextual. Having said that, it
is important to keep in mind that Kuhn was educated in the analytic tradition which
he opposes and, thus, offers an interesting case in point on the Gadamerian analysis of
the role that tradition plays in understanding. This unfolds in Kuhns consistent shift
away from the social towards the abstract and reductive, a point that this paper will
reveal by tracking the development of the notion of incommensurability in Kuhn and
showing what is at stake in each of Kuhns formulations.
The paper will run in two parts. The first part is devoted to Kuhns account of
incommensurability, and it will be divided into three sections. The first section will
provide a reading of the aesthetic version of the thesis of incommensurability. The
second section will present what many call Kuhns linguistic turn and show what this
turn entails for the notion of incommensurability. In the third section, I will show
that the linguistic reformulation of the thesis fails at resolving the tension between
incommensurability and understanding because it commits Kuhn to an objectivist
view of understanding. This objectivism, I shall argue, produces a paradox the resolution of which requires both a successful account of the state of communicative breakdown and an abandonment of the nave realism Kuhn seems to uphold about
historical data.
The second part will present the Gadamerian alternative which will enable us to
account for the compatibility of understanding and incommensurability without
325
thereby returning us to the impoverished objectivist view of language. I shall argue that
Gadamers account of understanding, as always contextual and prejudicial, and of
traditional horizon as being at once the enabling condition for understanding and a
hindrance thereof, enables us to resolve the paradox of incommensurability. The
second part will be divided into two sections. First, I will introduce the Gadamerian
account of understanding. Second, I shall show the implications of this perspective for
the historiography of science, then show how Gadamers account of the experience of
communicative breakdown escapes the paradox of incommensurability.
2. Kuhns Account of Incommensurability

The generic definition of incommensurability for Kuhn hinges on the famous notion
of paradigm. A scientific paradigm is what defines acceptable problems, standards, and
theories on the one hand, and binds a scientific community by certain values, metaphysical commitments and professional institutions on the other. Two successive paradigms are therefore incommensurable in so far as they function as distinct conceptual
networks through which scientists view the world. So distinct are these networks that
they cannot be said to oppose, contradict, or complement each other. By this account,
the accumulation of scientific knowledge, the continuous perfectibility of scientific
data, and the whole notion of coming closer to the true plan of the universe were radically shaken.
Under this generic statement of the thesis, Kuhn has at least three formulations.2
First, is the initial formulation offered in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (henceforth Structure); I shall call it the aesthetic formulation. This version of the thesis uses
the visual metaphor of gestalt switches. Second, is the linguistic formulation Kuhn
introduced in response to what Kuhn thought were misreadings of Structure. This
version hinges on local holism articulated in terms of distinct lexicons and taxonomic
categories. Third is the evolutionary formulation which can be found in Kuhns work
since 1990. This latter formulation attempts to account for the plurality of world views
in terms of evolutionary niches where incommensurability plays a positive role in the
process of scientific specialization (Kuhn 1990, 1112; Kuhn 1991, 712; Kuhn 2000b,
11620). The arguments in this paper pertain to the aesthetic and the linguistic
accounts only.
2.1. Aesthetic Version of the Thesis
According to Structure, incommensurability includes linguistic, aesthetic, practical,
conceptual, and ontological aspects, but throughout the Structure, aesthetic and visual
metaphors are stressed. Kuhn states there that a scientific revolution is a displacement
of the conceptual network through which scientists view the world (Kuhn 1970, 102;
emphasis added), and his understanding of such a displacement is expounded by
recourse to gestalt experiments in which visual interpretation plays the main role.
Although scientists committed to incommensurable paradigms may use much of the
same vocabulary, apparatus, and experiments, each group uses them within an entirely
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A. Albedah
distinct conceptual network. In Structure, Kuhn describes the different aspects of

incommensurability as displayed in times of revolution,
the proponents of competing paradigms will often disagree about the list of problems that any candidate for paradigm must resolve. Their standards or their definitions of science are not the same. [] Since new paradigms are born out of old ones,
they ordinarily incorporate much of the vocabulary and apparatus, both conceptual
and manipulative, that the traditional paradigm had previously employed. But they
seldom employ these borrowed elements in quite the traditional way. Within the new
paradigm, old terms, concepts, and experiments fall into new relationships one with
the other. [] communication across the revolutionary divide is inevitably partial.
[] the proponents of competing paradigms practice their trades in different worlds.
[] Practicing in different worlds, the two groups of scientists see different things
when they look from the same point in the same direction. Again that is not to say
that they see what they please. Both are looking at the world, and what they look at
has not changed. But in some areas they see different things, and they see them in
different relations to one to the other. That is why a law that cannot even be demonstrated to one group of scientists may occasionally seem intuitively obvious to
another. Equally, it is why before they can hope to communicate fully, one group or
the other must experience the conversion that we have been calling it a paradigm
shift. Just because it is a transition between incommensurables, the transition
between competing paradigms cannot be made a step at a time, forced by logic and
neutral experience. Like the gestalt switch, it must occur all at once (though not
necessarily in an instant) or not at all. (Kuhn 1970, 150)
In order to understand an incommensurable paradigm (an older one in historical

investigation and a new one in times of revolution), a scientist (or a historiographer)
has to undergo the same sudden realization that one experiences in a gestalt switch, that
he sees something he had not been able to see before. The gestalt switch, then, serves
metaphorically to show how a certain object can be seen and understood in different
ways (Brown 1983, 20).3 Seeing in this context must be taken in the Kantian sense in
so far as perception is not a matter of individual choice but is regulated by common
categories. But whereas, for Kant, phenomena conform to fixed categories, phenomena
here lend themselves to various patterns of arrangement (Kuhn 1991, 264; Kuhn 1993,
331; Irzik and Grnberg 1998). Proponents of two incommensurable paradigms inevitably use incompatible patterns of arrangements of the shared set of elements (be they
observations, tools, measurements, terms, or theories). This global incommensurability does not seem to be mitigated by the qualification that only in some areas they see
different things, because proponents of incommensurable paradigms would eventually practice their trades in different worlds (Kuhn 1970, 150). A relatively small set of
terms are the locales of incommensurability but they make for global incommensurability because they introduce a sweeping rearrangement of the relations between the
elements of the shared background. The conceptualization of the relation between
local and global incommensurability will prove to be a source of major difficulties for
Kuhn, but I shall return to this shortly.4
The aesthetic analogy, though expressive of the relation between a shared background and global incommensurability, is not without limitation. While the subject of
gestalt experiments appeals to an external measure (the lines on the paper for example)
327
against which he can switch back and forth between the multiple interpretations of the
lines, the scientist has no access to such external criteria. The scientist has no recourse
above or beyond what he sees with his eyes and instruments (Kuhn 1970, 114). Thus,
while the subject of the gestalt experiment may isolate the lines as the subject matter of
interpretation, the scientist can only see an interpreted world. Lacking such external
measure, the interpretive character of scientific knowledge is brought to the fore, and
contextually removed scientists end up dealing with entirely distinct phenomena while
gazing in the same direction from the same point. Understanding the phenomena of an
incommensurable paradigm would then require more than an adjustment of ones
gaze. It seems to require that one learns all what the paradigm defines: acceptable problems, standards, theories, values, metaphysical commitments, professional institutions, and world. But if one is immersed in ones own paradigm, with no access to
something like the lines on the paper, how does this learning take place?
As mentioned above, already in Structure Kuhn tries to qualify the thesis by allowing
partial communication between adherents of incommensurable paradigms and localizing the areas which they see differently. Kuhn thinks that this much is needed in the
way of a shared background to facilitate the understanding of an incommensurable
paradigm. But the qualification here is rather vague on several related questions, most
importantly: how does this understanding take place if shared terms fall within a new
network of other terms and therefore acquire a new meaning, a different sense of relevance to the theory, and so on? And what is the epistemic status of the understanding
that results from the switch into some distinct world? Does it mean acquiring something like the determinate perspective of the native? Or is it taken to be one possible
interpretation of the natives perspective? These questions are important to pursue
because although the general attitude in Structure is hostile to objectivism in science, it
remains ambivalent towards the objectivity of historiography.
The weakness of Kuhns qualifications of the thesis in Structure invited much criticism. Of this massive literature, Kuhn identifies two lines of argument against the
aesthetic account that motivated the linguistic turn.5 The first argument states that
incommensurability implies incomparability; this renders appeal to arguments from
evidence as a basis of theory choice a futile enterprise. Thus, this argument goes, a
shared background must be assumed which in turn falsifies the thesis of incommensurability (Shapere 1966; Scheffler 1967, 8189; Davidson 1974, 520). A second line of
argument holds that incommensurability implies an inability to understand older
theories in modern terms, but this is exactly what a historiographer of science does in
restructuring older theories. Thus, this camp holds, incommensurability cannot be
defended (Davidson 1974, 1720; Kitcher 1978; Putnam 1981). If either of these arguments is accepted, Kuhn must give up either his historical project or his incommensurability thesis. In other words, he must give up either the project or its philosophical
basis. Willing to give up neither, Kuhn continued to reformulate the notion of incommensurability in the hope that it would narrow the gap between his perspective as a
historian and as a philosopher.
The strength of the objections lies in pressing Kuhn to be clear about the relation
between global incommensurability (that scientists practice their trades in different
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A. Albedah
worlds), and local incommensurability (that there is substantive overlap between paradigms that facilitates mutual understanding). Closely related to this issue, Kuhn is
pressed to make clear how localizing the areas which scientists see differently makes
for incommensurability and not, for example, a simple bridgeable difference of opinion or opposition between closely related perspectives. And finally, the objections
invite the reflexive move from historiography to an account of the status of the historiographers own understanding and whether it is an objective reflection of the natives
stance, or merely one possible interpretation of it.
Kuhn argues that both arguments rest on conflating interpretation with mechanical
translation, whereas the historiographers task is contextual interpretation rather than
mechanical translation. Kuhn also attempts to show the compatibility of incommensurability and comparability by introducing a theory of meaning that is supposed to
enable a clearer account of local incommensurability and allow for the mutual
understanding of contextually removed parties. This is what many called Kuhns
linguistic turn.
2.2. Linguistic Turn
In this account, all talk of paradigms, gestalt switches, and an overarching global
incommensurability is replaced by talk of speech communities, partial changes of
meaning, and local incommensurability. Incommensurability now takes place, not
between paradigms or whole theories, but between a small subset of inter-defined
terms. Members of a speech community share a structured vocabulary of kind-terms
which represents a taxonomy of natural kinds (Kuhn 1983a, 68283; Kuhn 1991, 45).
Kind-terms are those taxonomic terms which have two properties: they are lexically
identified by taking the indefinite article, and the relations between them are governed
by the no-overlap principle (Kuhn 1991, 4). The last formulation of this principle
states that only terms which belong to the same contrast set are prohibited from
overlapping in membership. Male and horse may overlap but not horse and
cow (Kuhn 1993, 319).
Most kind terms are learned as members of some contrast set (Kuhn 1993, 317).
Theoretical terms are defined by laws that connect them together and with other kind
terms. While members of a speech community define kind terms the same way, they
may nevertheless have compatible but dissimilar exemplars for these kind-terms.
Incommensurability in this case is redefined as the violation of the no-overlap principle, or the referring of a kind term to referents denied by the taxonomy of the other
theory. Communicative breakdown is now described as follows:
Applied to the conceptual vocabulary deployed in and around a scientific theory, the
term incommensurability functions metaphorically. The phrase no common
measure becomes no common language. The claim that two theories are incommensurable is then the claim that there is no language, neutral or otherwise, into
which both theories, conceived as sets of sentences, can be translated without residue
or loss. No more in its metaphorical than its literal form does incommensurability
imply incomparability, and much for the same reason. Most of the terms common to
329
the two theories function the same way in both; their meanings, whatever those may
be, are preserved; their translation is simply homophonic. Only for a small subgroup
of (usually interdefined) terms and for sentences containing them do problems of
translatability arise. [] The terms that preserve their meanings across a theory
change provide a sufficient basis for the discussion of differences and for comparisons relevant to theory choice. They even provide [], a basis from which the meanings of incommensurable terms can be explored. (Kuhn 1983, 67071)
Incommensurability here becomes the failure of statement-for-statement correlation

between two theories. This takes place when the corresponding language communities
do not share a homology of lexical structure, referring expressions and a taxonomic
system. Where we fail to translate, for absence of common kind terms, or for the violation of the no-overlap condition, contextual interpretation is needed to save the day.
The move towards local holism is intended to expand the shared background
between rival paradigms in the hope of rendering the process of understanding an
incommensurable paradigm clearer than it had been in Structure. Here, the historiographer is allowed ample access to a shared background through which he may
come to understand locales of incommensurability. Note that the locales of incommensurability no longer prompt a large-scale rearrangement of the shared background; shared terms preserve their meanings across theory change. This shift is
quite significant and, as I will show in the next section, is quite destructive of the
notion of incommensurability itself. The historiographer is now faced with a potentially recognizable theory that only requires a bit of imaginative historical sense. But
in this process of understanding, the historiographer does not translate the older
theory into the modern one, but he learns the older theory as one learns a second
language: as a whole.
Appealing to second-language acquisition as a model for interpretive success is
meant to overcome the ethnocentricity that results from understanding as translation:
Kuhn asks how I can understand the other without turning them into I, or worse yet,
a failed approximation at I. Kuhns answer is: By turning the I into the other, by
learning how to speak and think like the other (Kuhn 1970, 204).
In learning a second language, one has to acquire the meaning of its terms in a
process of contextual interpretation (Kuhn 1983, 67677). The success of the interpretive task is marked by our ability to identify the referents of the terms in question, the
lexical structures of the target language, the categories of its taxonomic system, and
finally, to understand how the whole theory made sense to its followers. Interpretive
success, then, entails understanding how the world of the followers of the theory in
question was constituted, to render it transparent. However, understanding in this case
produces not an enrichment of the source language but bilingualism. Bilingualism is
inevitable in this case, Kuhn holds, because: if the members of a language community
encounter a dog thats also a cat (or more realistically, a creature like the duck-billed
platypus), they cannot just enrich the set of category terms but must instead redesign a
part of the taxonomy (Kuhn 1991, 4). Although this partial redesigning need not entail
large-scale changes, it remains incompatible with the source language and cannot be
homogenized with it. Languages will continue to be separated in these areas, and no
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A. Albedah
bridging is structurally possible. Only individual interpreters can cross the divide, and
only by becoming members of the target speech community.
Despite his denial of the possibility that one language could ultimately contain
another by enriching its expressive capacities, Kuhn insists that bilingualism does not
preclude comparability. Kuhn holds that incommensurable magnitudes can be
compared to any required degree of approximation (Kuhn 1983, 670). For example,
one can say that the square root of 2 (an irrational number) is greater than 1.4 and less
than 1.5 (rational numbers).6 Comparing incommensurable theories can then proceed
according to the level of disparity of the relevant terms. Where locals of incommensurability are absent, comparison can take place by the immediate comparison of the
empirical consequences of the two theories, and the shared vocabulary can support this
task despite the distinct conceptual patterns. Where the historiographer is faced with
locals of incommensurability, they need to learn the new vocabulary in its historical
context as a second language is learned. But although understanding in this case still
precludes statement for statement translation into modern terms and therefore
precludes statement for statement comparisons, appeal to global criteria of comparability can still be made. Theories in this case may be compared according to external
values like simplicity, accuracy, fruitfulness, and predictive power (Hoyningen-Huene
1990, 48990). This way, Kuhn thinks, both arguments against him are resolved. On
the one hand, incommensurability does not preclude a shared background and the
comparability of theories, and on the other hand understanding locales of incommensurability does not entail translating them into modern language. Though this
approach has been subjected to much scrutiny, some of its devastating consequences
are yet to be shown. I shall turn to this task in the following section.
2.3. Difficulties in the Linguistic Account
I will first outline the main problems that face Kuhns linguistic account of incommensurability. Focusing on a main Kuhnian premise, that there may be a final reading of
historical material, I shall proceed by rejecting the prospect of going native and the
distinction between translation and interpretation as Kuhn envisions it, and I shall
offer an analysis of what I call the paradox of incommensurability. Second, I turn to a
brief account of adequacy requirements that enable an account of incommensurability
to escape the objections raised against Kuhn.
Three main problems can be spotted in the linguistic account of incommensurability. First, the earlier problem of the standpoint of the historiographer becomes more
pressing.7 The oversimplification of the notion of language acquisition for a person
who is already a member of a language game dissolves the distinction between the
native and the interpreter in an important respect. As a member of a language game, a
person had already acquired the world view that was handed down in this language.
Learning a second language, then, takes place within the world view of the source
language. Sankey argues that learning a second language requires no mediation by the
source language, pointing to the fact that children acquire their mother tongue
directly, not by translating from one language to another, and on evidence suggesting
331
that bilingualsdefined as those who are equally competent in two languages

require no translation back and forth between two languages because neither language
merits the status of home language (Sankey 1991, 418).
But like the linguistic Kuhn, Sankey commits two errors regarding a source
language. While I agree with Sankey that learning the source language does not involve
translation into a prior language, it acquires the status of source language by virtue of
this very trait. An independent argument is needed to establish that second language
acquisition is not distinct from native linguistic conditioning. Sankey also seems to
conflate mediation with translation, while mediation is a rich process that may also be
substantive or structural.
By substantive mediation I mean that a source language is acquired with substantive
content (be it physical, moral, aesthetic, social, or psychological, to name only a few
possibilities) that comprises a world view and mediates the successful learning of a target
language. Mediation may also be structural, namely grammatical, syntactic, or semantic, where the influence of a source language on the acquisition of a second language is
well documented as the phenomenon of transfer or interference.8 Furthermore, as
Quine (and common sense experience) has shown, at least in the initial phases of learning a second language, mediation does involve translation. Granted that it is not of the
mechanical type that Kuhn had in mind, it still contradicts Sankeys assumption
The mediating character of the source language suggests that the outcome of secondlanguage learning is indeterminate in principle.9 This remains the case even when
incommensurability is localized; interconnected with every other aspect of the theory,
locales of incommensurability are open to an indefinite number of patterns of arrangement according to which an indefinite number of interpretations of the whole theory
can be said to exist.10 This is why Kuhns appeal for second-language acquisition as if
it happens without any prior initiation renders his claim more objectivistic than his
positivist adversaries. For now, we may claim to have understood an older theory
objectively, trans-historically, trans-culturally, and trans-contextually.
In an attempt to save Kuhns going native approach from the consequences of this
objection, Tresch (2001, 314) suggests that in hermeneutic understanding, one moves
in stages along a continuum between ones familiar worldview and an alien one and
suggests that the endpoint of that continuum, that of going native is the merely ideal
although logically necessary point from which to understand both of these objects.
Tresch distinguishes between attempts to understand historical and contemporary
cultures as, respectively, approximating the ideal to a limited degree, and approximating the ideal to the highest degree. The distinction, claims Tresch, rests on the degree
to which the actual community involved is practically accessible. Where one may
become a validated member of the target community, both ones familiar phenomenal
world and the alien phenomenal world emerge as subjects of study. While there can be
no guarantee that either could be studied objectively each would appear in some
sense objectified from the point of view of the other. This, Tresch holds, enables the
researcher to engage in a double-pincered phenomenology of ways of constructing
reality (Tresch 2001, 315). The researcher can thus view their own culture as an alien,
enriching his view of it and coming to terms with how others view it.
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A. Albedah
What Tresch calls going native is really only going back home. For here again, the
second language cannot be held on a par with the source language. Given that our
interest in the second language remains, according to Tresch, highly ethnocentric,
when objectified from the point of view of the source language, the second language
seems to be at a greater disadvantage. Tresch redefines going native from possessing
equal linguistic conditioning to approximating an ideal from a prejudiced perspective
and for ethnocentric purposes. Thus, while paying attention to the consequences of
linguistic (or paradigmatic) conditioning has been the most celebrated contribution
of Structure to the philosophy of science, the linguistic turn has ironically undermined this contribution by suggesting that by a simple act of will, one could jump
ship and become a native of another language. Thus, the standpoint of the historiographer remains a point of contest against Kuhn because of the indeterminacy of
interpretation.
The second difficulty with Kuhns linguistic account is closely related to the first. The
very distinction between translation and interpretation rests on an objectivist illusion.
Recall that this is the distinction which supports the argument for local incommensurability. Translatable terms, it seems, are those for which there is a match in our
language, while incommensurable terms are those that require interpretation. This
further step is required, it seems, because we cannot find in our language a way to
account for the subject matter. Interpreted terms can only be added to our language
in a special category, but they may not be homogenized with it or incorporated within
it. Thus, while interpretation involves understanding that is unadulterated by our firstlanguage world view, translation involves a matching of a fixed and final meaning.11
The claim to interpretive transparency that is involved in Kuhns notion of translation requires an account of the historiographers ability to escape the hermeneutic
circle. Not only does Kuhn lack such an account, he does not seem to think it is relevant. In the absence of obvious anomalies, the historiographers task seems to be reading off the structure of historical process as it really is with no interpretive
contribution on the historiographers part. Needless to say, no further complications
seem relevant to Kuhn in re-presenting his material to an audience. In re-presentation,
the original text undergoes a double distanciation once at the interpretation of the
historiographer and once again at the interpretation of the recipients of this re-presentation. Thus, indeterminacy of meaning is not only relevant to obvious locale of incommensurability; it is also involved in the act of translation where Kuhn seems to think
we are merely matching words.
If this argument is accepted, two of Kuhns celebrated contributions to the philosophy of science are questioned: his epistemological project, which involves subverting
the ethnocentrism and objectivism of traditional philosophy of science, and his historical project, which somehow objectively abstracts a structure of scientific revolutions
from history.12
The third difficulty which is derived from both arguments above is that the judgement on whether the relevant subsets of terms are translatable always takes place from
within the current tradition. This means that the judgement that the terms of one
language are untranslatable into the other itself hinges on current linguistic practice,
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available historical material, methodological fashion, personal virtues, etc. If one grants
this, then one must submit that whether translation is possible is itself a matter of interpretation.13 This hardly seems like a significant finding, but if these arguments are
accepted, they produce a paradox. The paradox is that our claim that two paradigms
(or theories or subsets of theoretical terms) are incommensurable, not being a unique
reading of history, is subject to contest by opposing (maybe incommensurable) interpretations. Thus, what Kuhn views as incommensurable theories may be viewed by
other historiographers as complementary, opposing, or otherwise substantively accumulative. The whole thesis is; therefore, subject to self-refutation. There is little doubt
that localizing incommensurability, at least in part, was motivated by Kuhns need to
increase the areas of partial communication so as to avoid the risk of self-refutation.
However, as shown above, the attempt fails for two reasons: it lacks reflexivity, and it
does not offer a convincing argument for the distinction between local and global
incommensurability.
A radical alternative to Kuhns resolution of the paradox requires a stronger mitigation of the notion of incommensurability. Rather than viewing it as a structural problematic, we may take the incompatibility of world views to be a result of a technical or
methodological failing on our part. By such an account, differences between conceptual schemes may not amount to much more than a difference of opinion that may be
easily overcome by dialogical convergence. No special linguistic competence is
required beyond ones ability to articulate clear conceptions in ones own language.
Supported by a realist streak, such a position would usually suggest that diligent
linguistic analysis and the avoidance of vagueness and equivocation can save the day.
Not only has this position failed to provide a persuasive argument throughout the
twentieth century, but much of our intuitive and commonsense experience, not to
mention the findings of science studies, counteract it. Despite our best efforts at clarity
and methodological rigour, communication sometimes seems to be impossible without some special kind of effort at understanding.
Resolving the paradox of incommensurability must, therefore, account for communicative breakdown while avoiding the objections raised against Kuhn. To achieve
this, an account needs to satisfy at least three adequacy requirements: it must be selfreferentially consistent; it must be open-ended; and finally, it must be historically
reflexive.
For an account to be self-referentially consistent, it must describe communicative
breakdown by acceptable premises that do not contradict the very conclusions that are
legitimately drawn from them. Kuhn violates this constraint when, as pointed out
above, he argues for the interpretive step involved in understanding while arguing that
there are final readings of historical material. This is what is referred to above as the
paradox of incommensurability. To be open-ended, an account of communicative
breakdown must allow that the state of communicative breakdown may be redescribed as a state of communicative success. In other words, it must allow that the
description of a particular state of communicative breakdown is one among many
possible descriptions of the states of affairs and is not unique. Kuhn founds every one
of the premises examined above on the violation of this condition, namely, that there
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A. Albedah
is objective meaning, that understanding entails going native, that translation without
residue is possible, and finally that the untranslatability of some terms is not a contextspecific judgement. As for historical reflexivity, an adequate account of communicative
breakdown must allow for its own situatedness to be at once a contributing factor to
communicative breakdown and a condition of communicative success. That is, it must
realize that historical conditioning involves being interested in certain aspects of the
text but that this fertile by-product of historical conditioning is accompanied by a
historical blindness or indifference to other aspects of the same text. Thus, our interest
in incommensurability itself must be viewed as historically conditioned.
In the following section, I will show how Gadamerian hermeneutics satisfies these
conditions and offers us a more apt account of the compatibility of understanding and
incommensurability.
3. Gadamerian Hermeneutics
This part is divided into two sections. In the first section, I offer a reading of Gadamerian hermeneutics highlighting such key notions as traditional horizon, historically
effected consciousness, the universality of interpretation, alienation, dialogical openness, and the fusion of horizons. I will also attend to a common interpretive error that
restricts Gadamerian hermeneutics to the Geisteswissenschaften to the total exclusion of
the natural sciences. In the second section, I shall give a brief account of what a
Gadamerian hermeneutics of science can offer as a corrective to Kuhn. Then, I will
show how Gadamers account of the experience of communicative breakdown escapes
the paradox of incommensurability.
3.1. Gadamerian Account of Understanding
Gadamer thinks that aesthetic experience is the exemplary hermeneutic experience
where the interplay between the object of experience, the context of understanding,
and understanding as a historical and linguistic event display a peculiar sort of unity
whereby the truth of the work of art, the context of understanding, and the understanding subject itself cannot be considered in isolation from one another. I will unpack this
concept by offering an account of six interrelated Gadamerian notions: traditional
horizon, historically effected consciousness, the universality of interpretation, alienation as the experience of communicative breakdown, dialogical openness, and the
fusion of horizons.
Like the early Kuhn, Gadamer appeals to a visual metaphor to elucidate the paradoxical boundedness and open-endedness of the context of understanding, Gadamer calls
it traditional horizon. Historically and linguistically individuated, a horizon defines
the prejudices and pre-understandings with which enquiry begins; it is at once the
medium through which understanding takes place, and its end product. But unlike
Kuhns paradigms or taxonomic systems, the context of understanding is neither rigid
nor absolute. The visual metaphor must be taken here in the stronger sense. Our visual
horizon is essential to having a visual experience, but it is always changing as a result of
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the things we encounter in this experience. Think for a moment of how certain aspects
of our visual field are more highlighted than others, and how our attention is directed
to certain objects rather than others. By the same token, visual experiences which lie
outside this field, and others which lie within it, may not be considered at all. Whatever
may be seen can only be seen from within this visual field, for it would be absurd to
speak of a possible visual experience without ones visual field.
The directing role of the visual field does not fixate our gaze in the same direction
and on the same objects. Inherent in visual experience is the realization that the objects
will make new sense under new light. For example, by extending ones visual field, or
by assuming new points of focus, new objects will come alive, new relations among the
objects which have already been taken into consideration will be revealed, and new
questions about interpretive possibilities become intrinsic aspects of the experience.
Analogically, what characterizes traditional horizon is continuous motion, or continuous interplay between its limiting and enabling roles. The metaphor then shows, first,
that no understanding shall take place without any particular horizon and, second, that
this horizon is in continuous motion.
The limiting and enabling roles of traditional horizon show that hermeneutic experience always expresses what Gadamer calls the historically effected consciousness.
History operates through the act of understanding by supplying the conditions of the
possibility of understanding, and the contextual limits of this understanding as well
(Gadamer 1994, 34179). To elucidate this point, one may analytically distinguish
between a positive and negative effect for history in interpretation. The positive effect
lies in supplying the conditions of the possibility of understanding, of going beyond the
subject matter, namely, by projecting the relevant questions that the text is supposed to
answer, the standards of acceptable interpretation, the operative universals in this
particular act of understanding, and so on. The negative effect lies in providing contextual limitations to what may be considered here and now, and thus disables the historian from inserting or eliminating aspects of the hermeneutic experience at whim. By
this account, different people will see different things when they look at the same
objects from within different traditional horizons because each interpretation is historically situated. It is important to note here that the awareness of these effects does not
eliminate them, for they can neither be fully articulated nor brought under reflective
evaluation all at once. But the awareness of these effects enables the reflexivity of understanding in so far as it is aware of its finitude and open-endedness.
Given the central role of historical effect, understanding a subject matter for
Gadamer is not the revealing of some final, unique, or objective meaning. Rather, he
thinks that in every understanding, we bring the prejudices and pre-understandings of
our horizon into play and reveal a meaning in the subject matter (be it a text, thing, or
person) that both we and the subject matter have a share in it. Just as seeing is a
creative process whereby it is always a seeing as, understanding is intrinsically and
thoroughly constructive and contextual. All understanding involves this hermeneutic
element and is subject to hermeneutic reflection. It follows from the universality of
interpretation that understanding is necessarily open-ended and plural. It is openended because what a native of one language understands of a certain text is always
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A. Albedah
partial, prejudicial, and finite. It is the experience of this finitude that motivates openness to other interpretations. By the same token, understanding is plural because traditional horizons are differentiated by virtue of what is handed down in their respective
languages, and these promote differentiated readings of the text (Gadamer 1976b, 16).
Recalling the visual metaphor, the finitude of the visual field highlights both the possibility of going beyond this particular visual experience (by extending horizon, diverting
focus from certain objects, shifting perspective, and so on), and the possibility that
there are other visual fields from which different visual experiences may result. This
implies that at each attempt at seeing, there is a different visual experience.
Guarding this contextualism against accusations of radical relativism, Gadamer
points to the limitations of the visual analogy:
In every world view the existence of the world-in-itself is intended. It is the whole to
which linguistically schematized experience refers. The multiplicity of worldviews
does not involve any relativization of the world. Rather, what the world is is not
different from the views in which it presents itself. The relationship is the same in the
perception of things. Seen phenomenologically, the thing-in-itself is, as Husserl has
shown, nothing but the continuity with which the various perceptual perspectives
on objects shade into one another. [] In the same way as with perception we can
speak of the linguistic shadings that the world undergoes in different languageworlds. But there remains a characteristic difference: every shading of the object of
perception is exclusively distinct from every other, and each helps co-constitute the
thing-in-itself as the continuum of these nuanceswhereas, in the case of the shadings of verbal world views, each one potentially contains every other one within it
i.e. each world view can be extended into every other. It can understand and
comprehend, from within itself, the view of the world presented in another
language. (Gadamer 1994, 44748; emphasis added)
Here, Gadamer reconciles the multiplicity of languages, traditional horizons, or

hermeneutic experiences with the possibility of mutual understanding by holding that
languages are not self-contained units, but are open-ended in such a way that in principle enables each to account for the others perspective. The analogy with Husserls
phenomenology of perception is revealing of two important aspects of Gadamers
position on relativism. First, is drawing our attention to the whole that is intended in
the multiplicity of verbal experiences. Languages are individuations of a universal;
thus, they are essentially compatible and open-ended. But second, he reminds us to set
him apart from Husserls objectivism. Understanding cannot be the grasping of any
one thing in itself as an ideal entity independent of any linguistic context.14 The key
phrase in the passage above is within itself. In trying to understand the worldview of
a contextually removed language, our own language works at once as a barrier to
understanding and as a facilitator thereof. It is a barrier in so far as it directs our attention away from certain aspects of the text, aspects that may have central concern for
others. On the other hand, it is a facilitator to understanding in so far as it focuses our
attention on aspects of the text that produce our particular understanding of it,
aspects to which others may be indifferent. This context carries within itself tacit standards of acceptability and rationality according to which interpretations are debated
and evaluated.15
337
The attempt to understand, or to learn a second language, therefore, takes place

from within our initial context, the prejudices and preconceptions of which may not
be bracketed. In learning a second language, there is a subject matter to be communicated, a matter that we feel directed towards by means of our traditional horizon but
eludes us because it frustrates our expectations and does not quite fit with our preunderstandings. This sense of alienation from the other is at the heart of Kuhns
notion of incommensurability. The other (as alien) presents us with the challenge
that our expectations or preconceptions about the subject matter do not obtain.
Gadamer thinks that the attempt to render once more the alien familiar requires our
willingness to surrender to the others superiority, or to the truth of their claims.
Understanding, thus, incurs changes in our traditional horizon, in the stock of our
traditional prejudices. Without such willingness, or what Gadamer calls dialogical
openness, communicative breakdown is inevitable. By redefining communicative
breakdown as the lack of dialogical openness, the notion is made to refer to the
hermeneutic attitude of the historiographer and, as such, provides a reflexive
perspective from which Kuhns reductive account of incommensurability may be
productively evaluated.16
A central aspect of dialogical openness, of understanding in general, is the anticipation of completion. Viewed as a whole, the text must be assumed to enjoy internal
unity. Such unity does not negate the possibility of internal contradictions, discontinuities, or open-endedness, for these could only be seen in light of an assumption of
unity.17 Partial experience of a text always takes place in light of a pre-understanding
which is projected onto the whole/unit. As interpretation proceeds, the understanding
of the whole would in turn bring the parts under new light revising their initial meaning. Individual traditional prejudices are then accepted as productive, or rejected as
non-productive of fruitful interpretations, but the whole tradition may not become a
subject of controversy all at once. Gadamer articulates this process in terms of the question/answer dialectic, where the initial meaning of a text is assumed to be an answer to
the question that interpretation must uncover (Gadamer 1994, 26770). The traditional horizon of the interpreter, or the source language in Kuhns jargon, would then
supply the presumed question, the pre-understandings with which interpretation is
begun, the standards of revisability and acceptability, the standards of internal consistency and unity, and so on.
Trying to understand the other would, therefore, require some accommodation on
our part. Rendering the alien familiar may take place from an indefinite number of
viewpoints, all of which require expanding our traditional horizon in unexpected ways,
ways that do not lend themselves to methodological prescriptions. Like the sudden
realization in the gestalt switch, rendering the alien familiar happens all at once, guided
by our traditional horizons. This process does not, as with Kuhns view, transpose the
I into the Thou; rather, it expands the limits of our own language and our own horizons, and this is what Gadamer calls the fusion of horizons (Gadamer 1994, 306307).
By this account, there is no final meaning to be grasped, no end product to be reported
as an objective documentation of a theory of historical progress, but endlessly revisable
understanding, and an ever expanding horizon. Once the finitude and the plurality of
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A. Albedah
understanding are acknowledged, and radical relativism eliminated by highlighting the

open-endedness of languages, dialogue becomes the model for enquiry. Dialogue for
Gadamer is then the mutual enrichment of the perspectives of partners in conversation. Going back to the visual metaphor, this may be done by adjusting ones visual
field farther along the edges, or bringing to the fore objects that one had been ignoring
in the background, or establishing new relations among objects that were not taken to
be connected in any meaningful sense.
Some object, alongside Kuhn, to the claim that the scientific language of a certain
theory may be enriched indefinitely. For example, Sankey (1991, 422) argues that natural languages have indefinite expressive capacities but that special languages are limited
in this regard because they cannot accept terms that refer to entities which are denied
by the relevant theory.18 Two points are to be made in response.
The first response is that nothing in principle bars a language from representing
something it actually or potentially denies. While an anthropologist might deny that
the term ghost refers to an existing entity at all, it may well serve an expressive function in their language. The cost at which this claim may be surrendered is to lose the
ability to recognize anomalies. If our language lacks expressive capacities beyond
admissible entities, then it seems necessary that the natural world always conforms to
our expectations. An anomaly, by definition, is something that frustrates our expectations; it frustrates the categories through which we view the world. Recognizing an
anomaly, then, must require that scientific languages retain within them the capacity
to recognize otherness.19 But recognizing otherness, such as a term for which there is
not a mechanical translation (to borrow a Kuhnian favourite) does require that we are
at least capable of an initial description of that term.
The second response to the arguments against the openness of scientific languages is
that it works only where a scientific language is conceived as a closed system of terms
tightly connected by rigid designation and clearly defined laws. Only then would the
language prohibit importing new concepts. In his strongest statement about the rigidity of scientific languages, Kuhn denies that they are such closed systems. From the
example cited above (Kuhn 1991, 4), perfecting taxonomic categories happens gradually whereby a group that encounters a creature not allowed by its current taxonomic
structure redesigns that part of the taxonomy so that it would fit this creature. As a
result of surrendering global incommensurability (granting for the sake of argument
that it is possible), the perfecting of the taxonomic categories and the redesign of the
relevant part of the taxonomy need not involve radical change; it may well be a part of
what Kuhn had called normal science, the puzzle-solving activity of the relative scientific community. Thus, even on Kuhns terms, languages may not be considered as
closed systems.
This conclusion is further served by recalling thatcontra the later Kuhnthere is
more to a scientific language than a taxonomic structure. A scientific language hands
down a tradition of practices, values, aspirations, and political and psychological
commitments, among other things. Thus, enrichment of a scientific language may take
place via any of these aspects of a scientific tradition and may or may not induce largescale changes in the theory.
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While Gadamer agrees that our traditional horizons are limited and finite at a particular point in time, he insists that they are open-ended in principle and may potentially
contain all other languages. The difference in perspective between Gadamer and Kuhn
on this matter is fairly significant. While they both agree that different languages relate
to different domains of experience, they disagree about the kind of abyss that separates
them. For Kuhn, the other can only be known by being owned, by jumping out of ones
skin and into someone elses. But for Gadamer, enriching our traditional horizons
takes place within a dialogical mode of enquiry. Only by ongoing dialogue with otherness can we attempt reinterpretations of ourselves and of the other. The other brings
the subject matter to bear, makes clear the distance, and displays the alienation with
which we are challenged. Trying to understand the other in the objectified mode,
thinking that there is a determinate meaning to be grasped is not only a bad epistemic
strategy but is morally dubious. For Gadamer, the I cannot become a Thou; we
remain ethnocentric and self-involved, and thus must remind ourselves of our
constant need to be open to the otherness of the other (Gadamer 1994, 396). Rather
than being a shortcoming of historical understanding, this realization makes for a
historically reflexive historiographer. Reflexivity in this context is not equivalent to
interpretive transparency but guards against sweeping objectivist illusions. I shall
return to the implications of this perspective for the historiography of science in the
next section, but first I must address a common misreading of Gadamers position on
the scope of hermeneutic reflection.
It is commonly thought that the scope of Gadamerian hermeneutics is limited to the
human sciences to the exclusion of natural science. References are often made to the
antithesis between Truth and Method that Gadamers most celebrated title suggests. I
argue that while, in his early writings, Gadamer may have had a rather nave concept of
natural scientific methodology, and of the demarcation between natural and human
sciences, he stated very clearly that natural science falls within the scope of hermeneutical reflection. Gadamer writes:
In the realm of the natural sciences, also, in my opinion, in the theory of knowledge
one cannot avoid the hermeneutical criticism that the given cannot be separated
from understanding. Even in all protocol-formulating procedures, even in so-called
perception itself, the hermeneutic understanding of something-as-something is still
operative. (Gadamer 2001, 42)
This remark indicates that natural science and scientific methodology are intrinsically
interpretive. The antithesis intended in Truth and Method is that between the objectivistic methodological attitude of the natural sciences, and the hermeneutic attitude that
Gadamer wishes to promote. More specifically, it is the antithesis between the selfunderstanding of natural science (as objective knowledge), and the universality of
hermeneutics (Gadamer 1976a, 2627). Given the claim that all understanding is
linguistic, and therefore interpretive, scientific language cannot be excluded from the
hermeneutic attitude on pains of self-contradiction (Gadamer 1994, 450). It must be
conceded, though, that some of Gadamers remarks about scientific methodology and
the demarcation between natural and human sciences stand in contradiction to his
general philosophical position (Gadamer 1994, 28385).
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A. Albedah
3.2. Escaping the Paradox of Incommensurability

The most significant Gadamerian corrective is bridging the gap between Kuhns philosophical project and his historical project. Recall that Kuhns work is marked by a split
between these two projects. On the one hand, the historical project is an exercise in
hermeneutic understanding, but on the other hand, the philosophical project is
restricted to a moment in hermeneutic experience; namely, the moment of alienation.
The Gadamerian perspective bridges the gap by acknowledging alienation as a moment
in hermeneutic experience while denying it centre stage (Gadamer 1976b, 15).
The Gadamerian account of communicative breakdown hinges on the hermeneutic
attitude of understanding. When we adopt the attitude of openness to the others claim
to truth, the attitude of risking some of our operative prejudices, alienation may be
overcome, but once we desert the hermeneutic attitude of openness, communicative
breakdown results. Overcoming alienation is possible because languages are potentially
compatible. Rather than trivializing our commonsense experience of radical difference,
Gadamer provides us with better tools to understand it. Gadamer re-conceptualizes
radical difference in terms of the perceived radical difference thereby refuting the
inherent linguistic or logical gap between two languages. I shall elaborate on this
distinction in what follows.
As has been argued above, the notions of alien, or other, do not denote something
entirely removed from our language. Practices we call radically different may be those
of which we cannot make sense, do not accept, or actively reject. While none of these
instances entails that the practice falls outside the boundaries of our language, they do
indicate a sense of alienation.20 The success of the attempt to overcome this alienation
is contingent upon our willingness to be open to change. Methodologically, this
dictates that we continue to adjust our initial reading of the matter until we can make
sense of it in a continuous interplay between the whole and the parts; between the alien
and the familiar; and between the question and the answer. Given that understanding
an alien practice, whether or not we accept it, always carries a considerable risking of
the preconceptions and pre-understandings that are handed down in our language,
over-emphasizing difference often compensates for our lack of openness and flexibility. In the game of understanding, the players failure to understand is their failure
rather than the failure of the game.
Thus, when interpretation assumes an interpretive scheme whereby no allowance is
made for change, because it assumes for itself a position of historical/epistemic superiority, it seems only inevitable to write the story of incommensurable scientific theories,
or that of a discontinuous history. While a Gadamerian perspective might allow for
viewing two static scientific theories as taxonomic systems with radically incompatible
categories, it neither generalizes this interpretive pattern into a theory of science nor
accepts the pattern as the only (or most productive) interpretive pattern for understanding this particular subject matter.
Adopting a Gadamerian historiography of science also addresses the extent to which
science is contextualized (Gadamer 1994, 559). It extends hermeneutic reflection
beyond the history of successive scientific theories, into the actual methodology of
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natural science. To be sure, Gadamer does not undertake this task in any serious
manner, but his later remarks point in this direction.21 The success of a scientist,
Gadamer holds, is not restricted to the mechanical replication of a method but to the
kinds of interpretive judgements a scientist makes in understanding and applying the
method (Gadamer 1976b, 11). These judgements, which form the central contribution
of the scientist, must then be brought under hermeneutic reflection. Kuhn restricted
his historiography to the structural study of scientific theories and to some extent to the
communities that these theories lead, but gave no special attention to the methodology
of science as an interpretive practice.
In addition to the correctives mentioned above, the Gadamerian perspective
defended here satisfies the adequacy requirements set in Section 2.3. First, the account
is self-referentially consistent because it establishes the universality of hermeneutics
and rejects Kuhns claim that there are final readings of historical material. Second, it
is open-ended because it provides a more elastic account of communicative breakdown
whereby the particular case in point may be described as a moment of communicative
breakdown from one perspective, and as a moment of communicative success from the
other. It also assigns the responsibility for such success to the historiographer and his
willingness to be open to the other. This is significant for the history of science because
it opens up the structural reading of history to a multitude of histories each being itself
a shading of the whole that is intended without thereby reducing languages to one
another. From one particular perspective, two theories may appear to be incommensurable and discontinuous, and from another accumulative and linear. The interpretive standards in the one case may borrow from a distinct experience of the world than
the other.
Third is the reflexivity requirement. Gadamer holds the principle of effective history
to be a central notion in his philosophical hermeneutics. This notion allows us to
see, for example, that the historical interest in the alien is a modern concern and that
the move from the multiplicity of horizons to cultural solipsism is not inevitable.
Historically effected consciousness may be identified, for example, in the positivists
interest in understanding the superiority of scientific method, or the linear progress of
scientific theories, whereas it may be identified in the early 1960s in the interest in
subduing the authority of scientific method, and in showing the discontinuity of
historical eras, scientific theories, or cultural practices. In either case, there is an operative prejudice guiding the interpretation of scientific history.22
Whereas this view shows that the history of science is intrinsically contextual, that it
is woven within the psychological, moral, political, economic, and social horizon of a
particular tradition, Kuhns account stripped it of hermeneutic significance and
reduced it to an analysis of scientific taxonomies.23 The turn to hermeneutics would
then indicate a move a way from the reductive into the richer and thicker account of
science.
If the arguments presented here are accepted, the philosophy and the historiography
of science must recover the centrality of their hermeneutic dimension by redirecting
their driving questions and re-envisioning their relationship. The split between the
epistemic questions that motivate traditional philosophy of science, and the historical
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A. Albedah
questions that motivate the historiography of science overlooks the interpretive character of all understanding. But given the Gadamerian perspective defended here, the
peripheral position of the historical in relation to the epistemic, as typically depicted in
the relation between the case study and the abstract principle, is no longer defensible.
The recovering of the hermeneutic dimension of science, then, requires a merging of
the historical and the epistemic. This merger paves the path for a new hermeneutics of
science and opens up new possibilities for rethinking what is questionable in science.
Acknowledgements
An earlier sketch of this paper was presented at the 12th International Congress of
Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science, August, 2003. I would like to thank the
participants of the conference who were most generous with their questions and objections. I would also like to acknowledge the contribution of the anonymous referees of
ISPS for their insightful and helpful comments on an earlier draft.
Notes
[1] For an account of the origin of the idea in Feyerabend, see Oberheim and Hoyningen-Huene
(1997). For a comparison between Kuhns conception of incommensurability and that of
Feyerabend, see Hoyningen-Huene (2000).
[2] For excellent reviews of the development of Kuhns incommensurability thesis, see Chen
(1997), Hoyningen-Huene (1990), Sankey (1993), and Buchwald and Smith (1997).
[3] A different line of interpretation suggests that the gestalt metaphor equivocates between
two senses of the word experience: an epistemological sense that involves the organizational role of language, and a physiological sense which pertains to the causal process
involved in perception (Malone 1993, 8183). Malone suggests that the problem of incommensurability pertains to the epistemic not the physiological sense of experience, since
observations are not theory-laden in the sense that undermines objectivity. The argument
begs the question, since it needs to show rather than assume that observations are not
theory-laden.
[4] For a detailed look at the distinction between global and local incommensurability, see
Simmons (1994, 12021). Simmons suggests that local incommensurability excludes global
incommensurability because of the substantive overlap between the rival theories. But it
remains unclear how changes in local areas do not induce large-scale changes. Chen (1990)
discusses this difficulty.
[5] Whether Kuhns interpretation of these arguments is fair is an interesting question, but it will
not be pursued here.
[6] See Sharrock and Read (2002, 14143), for a detailed account of the mathematical origin of
the concept.
[7] Hoyningen-Huene (1990, 49192) raises this issue against Kuhn and argues that a general
theory of world constitution requires that the historiographer brackets all elements
from their own particular world, but that such bracketing is impossible on pains of selfcontradiction.
[8] For a thorough survey of recent research on the phenomenon of transfer and the different
ways in which a source language influences the learning of a target language, see Odlin (2005).
Odlin suggests that empirical research done over the last decade on Second Language Acquisition seems to give significant credence to theories of conceptual relativity whereby the understanding of the target language is mediated by the source language.
343
[9] Against Quines claim for multiple possible interpretations (Quine, 1987), Kuhn (1990, 300)
suggests that in cases of communicative breakdown, there are usually none at all. These cases
Kuhn suggests are the ones that require conscious contextual interpretation where a unique
meaning is uncovered.
[10] This argument shows that Kuhns account of local incommensurability can only be accepted
at the cost of denying the interconnectedness of theoretical terms.
[11] Hesse anticipates this objection when she suggests that Kuhns distinction between translation
and interpretation is not as sharp as he makes it. Hesse thinks that communication between
languages adopting different taxonomies need not assume an identity of shared taxonomy; a
sufficient intersection between the relevant taxonomies would do (Hesse 1983, 708).
[12] For passages in Structure against the ethnocentric attitude of tradition historiography of
science and of science textbooks, see Kuhn (1970, 126, 138, 140). In later writings, Kuhn
seems to think that he can establish his philosophical position a priori without appealing to
the historical record. See especially Kuhn (2000b).
[13] To be sure, Kuhn is aware that many translations of the same text may exist (see, for example,
Kuhn 2000a, 164) but does not seem to be aware of the significance of this claim for firstorder statements like no translation exists for term x, nor to second-order statements like
there is a structure to scientific theories.
[14] For a wonderful exposition of Gadamers ontology of language as anti-objectivist, see
Kertscher (2002, 13549). It must be noted, though, that Kertschers opposition between
truth and tradition misses the very point of the contextualism Gadamer espouses. This will be
examined below.
[15] For empirical research on how this is displayed in learning a second language, see Odlin (2005).
[16] While cognizant of the narrow range of Kuhns linguistic account of incommensurability,
Buchwald and Smith (1997, 375) dismiss the problem as a matter of scope of interest rather
than a defect in the account. I submit that Fullers diagnosis of the narrowness of the account
as symptomatic of the Cold War eras turn away from the politics of knowledge production
provides a better ground for understanding Kuhns linguistic turn (Fuller 2000, 532).
[17] See Warnke (1987, 8291). I disagree with Warnkes assessment that Gadamer is conservative.
But lacking the space for a detailed argument, I shall just assert that viewed in relation to a
naive radical revisionism that seems to believe that one can break free of all tradition;
Gadamers position may be viewed as a reflexive revisionist.
[18] In a stronger argument that includes natural languages, Kuhn (1999, 36) argues that enriching
a source language by adding categories it flatly denies would make for a self-contradictory
language that will perish along with its users. The major error Kuhn commits here is conflating enrichment with the acceptance of categories, but with the taxonomic account of language
that Kuhn supports such conflation seems necessary.
[19] To be sure, Structure (Kuhn 1970, 5291) describes the ways in which a scientific community
identifies and deals with anomalies.
[20] A classic example of this is the psychoanalytic notion of projection where otherness is reviled
for mirroring ones own flaws. This is a case where alienation (from the other and from
oneself) is not a result of a linguistic incompatibility but a result of our unwillingness to make
the concessions that understanding requires of us.
[21] For example, Gadamer (2001, 4) states that
the question whether there is also a hermeneutics appropriate to the natural sciences needs to
be taken seriously. In the philosophy of science since Thomas Kuhn this point has been widely
discussed. I think this is above all because natural scientific methods do not show us how to
apply the results of scientific work to the practice of living life in a rational way.
[22] Fuller (2000, 532) suggests that Kuhns neglect of his own historicity has significantly
contributed to the death of philosophical history, and managed to reverse the attention away
from the politics of knowledge production in the philosophy of science.
344
A. Albedah
[23] For a concise account of the historical and biographical bearings of this move, see Fuller
(2003, especially chapters 2 and 6). Fullers account shows that Kuhns consistent move away
from the social towards the reductive is a case in which the effect of tradition (here the tradition in which Kuhn was initiated into philosophy) is displayed.
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A Gadamerian Critique of Kuhn's Linguistic Turn: Incommensurability Revisited

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A Gadamerian Critique of Kuhns

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International Studies in the Philosophy of Science

A Gadamerian Critique of Kuhns

In this article, I discuss Gadamers hermeneutic account of understanding as an alternative

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2. Kuhns Account of Incommensurability

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distinct conceptual network. In Structure, Kuhn describes the different aspects of

In order to understand an incommensurable paradigm (an older one in historical

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Incommensurability here becomes the failure of statement-for-statement correlation

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that bilingualsdefined as those who are equally competent in two languages

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Here, Gadamer reconciles the multiplicity of languages, traditional horizons, or

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The attempt to understand, or to learn a second language, therefore, takes place

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understanding are acknowledged, and radical relativism eliminated by highlighting the

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3.2. Escaping the Paradox of Incommensurability

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