What are some counter arguments and examples of counterarguments to Thomas Kuhn's argument from incommensurability?

 

Kuhns incommensurability opened up philosophical developments but caused a huge challenge to realists as well as to those who conceive scientific change positively.

Incommensurable simply means there is no common measure. in 1962 Kuhn's structure of scientific revolution, claims that science history shows illustrates that proponents of competing paradigms does not support each others views and so they make cross purposes their subject of discussion. Kuhn thus term such collective reasons that seem to limit communication as incommensurability of both the pre revolutionary and post revolutionary scientific traditions. Different competing paradigms tends to lack a common measure as each uses it's own concepts and methods to solve different problems, thus reducing chances of overall communication in revolutionary divide. According to Kuhn, there were different types of incommensurability which are methodological, observational and semantic. In methodological, there can be no common measure as there is constant change in methods of evaluation and comparison. Observational evidence is not sufficient in provision of common basis for comparing theories due to the fact that perceptual experience depends wholly on theory. Semantic on the other hand, states that since language used in theories from varying periods of normal science is not inter translatable, then this poses a challenge on comparison of such theories. Kuhns incommensurability brought about a huge challenge to realists as well as to those who conceive scientific change positively.

Many philosophers did embrace Kuhn's work and rather critiqued it. His work opened up philosophical developments which were faced with criticism. philosophers argued that not every angle Kuhns development account of science is accurate. They further criticized his incommensurability notion stating that it s not in existence and t if it exists it is not to be considered a significant problem. in the case of scientific change, Mizrahi argues that not every scientific change is revolutionary. He further states that there should be separate scientific change that is revolutionary and non revolutionary scientific changes in respect to normal science. park also states that both scientific revolution and taxonomic incommensurability are rare and that the latter is common. park further criticizes scientific change by stating that distant scientific past should distinguished from the recent past. He argues the in the distant past the scientific revolutions seemed to be more common while the recent past most past theories are deemed stable and that the most present ones will eventually become stable. He then argues that Kuhn's paradigm revolutionary change theory is not appropriate in regard to understanding the development of both the contemporary and future science.