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A Gadamerian Critique of KuhnsLinguistic Turn: IncommensurabilityRevisitedAmani AlbedahVersion 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 ScienceVol. 20, No. 3, October 2006, pp. 323345

ISSN 02698595 (print)/ISSN 14699281 (online) 2006 Inter-University FoundationDOI: 10.1080/02698590600961000

A Gadamerian Critique of Kuhns Linguistic Turn: Incommensurability RevisitedAmani AlbedahTaylor and Francis LtdCISP_A_196008.sgm10.1080/02698590600961000International Studies in the Philosophy of Science0269-8595 (print)/1469-9281 (online)Original Article2006Taylor & Francis203000000October 2006AmaniAlbedahaalbedah@qualitynet.net

In this article, I discuss Gadamers hermeneutic account of understanding as an alternativeto Kuhns incommensurability thesis. After a brief account of Kuhns aesthetic account andarguments against it, I argue that the linguistic account faces a paradox that results fromKuhns objectivist account of understanding, and his lack of historical reflexivity. The state-ment Languages are incommensurable is not a unique view of language, and is thussubject to contest by incommensurable readings. Resolving the paradox requires an accountof incommensurability that is self-referentially consistent, open-ended, and historicallyreflexive whereby we recognize that our very interest in incommensurability is historicallyconditioned. By meeting these conditions, Gadamers account of historical understandingoffers a middle ground between two extremes: on the one side is the claim that understand-ing involves becoming a native of an incommensurable language, and on the other side isthe rejection of the prospect of understanding a contextually removed language altogether.Gadamer is discussed as a mediator between Kuhns epistemic and historical projects, andthus paves the way for a new hermeneutics of science. The notions of traditional horizon,historically effected consciousness, the universality of interpretation, alienation, dialogicalopenness, and the fusion of horizons are also discussed.

1. Introduction

Soon after its inception by Paul Feyerabend and Thomas Kuhn, the notion of incom-mensurability became one of the most fashionable terms of contemporary academicculture.1 The notion, which denoted the discontinuity or the communicative break-down between contextually removed traditions, attracted devout supporters and fierceadversaries 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

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that cuts right through communicative breakdown, whereas adversaries thought thatthe thesis of incommensurability was inherently inconsistent with any notion of under-standing 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 gapbetween incommensurability and understanding. By drawing on the affinities betweenKuhn and Hans-Georg Gadamer, I will show that Gadamerian hermeneutics providesa more apt account of the process of understanding an alien tradition. This accountfalls between two extremes: on the one side are Kuhn and his supporters who claim thatunderstanding an incommensurable worldview is equivalent to becoming a native oftwo contextually removed languages; and on the other side are Kuhns adversaries whoreject the possibility of understanding a contextually removed language altogether. Bylocalizing incommensurability and insisting that incommensurability amounts to adeterminate radical difference between conceptual schemes, Kuhns camp faces what Ishall call the paradox of incommensurability, while his adversaries attack a straw manby assuming the total absence of overlap between the two languages. Both extremes, Ishall argue, share the presupposition that Gadamer places under attack; namely, thatunderstanding (and recognizing the state of alienation) is a mirroring of a static anddeterminate 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 thesame historical era and share a main philosophical concern; namely, to offer an accountof knowledge as linguistically, historically, socially, and culturally constituted. Bothoppose traditional analytic philosophy of science with its objectivist project, and bothaim at showing that historical understanding is deeply contextual. Having said that, itis important to keep in mind that Kuhn was educated in the analytic tradition whichhe opposes and, thus, offers an interesting case in point on the Gadamerian analysis ofthe role that tradition plays in understanding. This unfolds in Kuhns consistent shiftaway from the social towards the abstract and reductive, a point that this paper willreveal by tracking the development of the notion of incommensurability in Kuhn andshowing what is at stake in each of Kuhns formulations.

The paper will run in two parts. The first part is devoted to Kuhns account ofincommensurability, and it will be divided into three sections. The first section willprovide a reading of the aesthetic version of the thesis of incommensurability. Thesecond section will present what many call Kuhns linguistic turn and show what thisturn entails for the notion of incommensurability. In the third section, I will showthat the linguistic reformulation of the thesis fails at resolving the tension betweenincommensurability and understanding because it commits Kuhn to an objectivistview of understanding. This objectivism, I shall argue, produces a paradox the resolu-tion of which requires both a successful account of the state of communicative break-down and an abandonment of the nave realism Kuhn seems to uphold abouthistorical data.

The second part will present the Gadamerian alternative which will enable us toaccount for the compatibility of understanding and incommensurability without

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thereby returning us to the impoverished objectivist view of language. I shall argue thatGadamers account of understanding, as always contextual and prejudicial, and oftraditional horizon as being at once the enabling condition for understanding and ahindrance thereof, enables us to resolve the paradox of incommensurability. Thesecond part will be divided into two sections. First, I will introduce the Gadamerianaccount of understanding. Second, I shall show the implications of this perspective forthe historiography of science, then show how Gadamers account of the experience ofcommunicative breakdown escapes the paradox of incommensurability.

2. Kuhns Account of Incommensurability

The generic definition of incommensurability for Kuhn hinges on the famous notionof paradigm. A scientific paradigm is what defines acceptable problems, standards, andtheories on the one hand, and binds a scientific community by certain values, meta-physical commitments and professional institutions on the other. Two successive para-digms are therefore incommensurable in so far as they function as distinct conceptualnetworks through which scientists view the world. So distinct are these networks thatthey cannot be said to oppose, contradict, or complement each other. By this account,the accumulation of scientific knowledge, the continuous perfectibility of scientificdata, and the whole notion of coming closer to the true plan of the universe were radi-cally 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 (hence-forth Structure); I shall call it the aesthetic formulation. This version of the thesis usesthe visual metaphor of gestalt switches. Second, is the linguistic formulation Kuhnintroduced in response to what Kuhn thought were misreadings of Structure. Thisversion hinges on local holism articulated in terms of distinct lexicons and taxonomiccategories. Third is the evolutionary formulation which can be found in Kuhns worksince 1990. This latter formulation attempts to account for the plurality of world viewsin terms of evolutionary niches where incommensurability plays a positive role in theprocess of scientific specialization (Kuhn 1990, 1112; Kuhn 1991, 712; Kuhn 2000b,11620). The arguments in this paper pertain to the aesthetic and the linguisticaccounts 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 visualmetaphors are stressed. Kuhn states there that a scientific revolution is a displacementof the conceptual network through which scientists view the world (Kuhn 1970, 102;emphasis added), and his understanding of such a displacement is expounded byrecourse to gestalt experiments in which visual interpretation plays the main role.Although scientists committed to incommensurable paradigms may use much of thesame vocabulary, apparatus, and experiments, each group uses them within an entirely

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distinct conceptual network. In Structure, Kuhn describes the different aspects ofincommensurability as displayed in times of revolution,

the proponents of competing paradigms will often disagree about the list of prob-lems that any candidate for paradigm must resolve. Their standards or their defini-tions 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 conceptualand manipulative, that the traditional paradigm had previously employed. But theyseldom employ these borrowed elements in quite the traditional way. Within the newparadigm, old terms, concepts, and experiments fall into new relationships one withthe 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 thingswhen they look from the same point in the same direction. Again that is not to saythat they see what they please. Both are looking at the world, and what they look athas not changed. But in some areas they see different things, and they see them indifferent relations to one to the other. That is why a law that cannot even be demon-strated to one group of scientists may occasionally seem intuitively obvious toanother. Equally, it is why before they can hope to communicate fully, one group orthe other must experience the conversion that we have been calling it a paradigmshift. Just because it is a transition between incommensurables, the transitionbetween competing paradigms cannot be made a step at a time, forced by logic andneutral experience. Like the gestalt switch, it must occur all at once (though notnecessarily in an instant) or not at all. (Kuhn 1970, 150)

In order to understand an incommensurable paradigm (an older one in historicalinvestigation 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, thathe sees something he had not been able to see before. The gestalt switch, then, servesmetaphorically to show how a certain object can be seen and understood in differentways (Brown 1983, 20).3 Seeing in this context must be taken in the Kantian sense inso far as perception is not a matter of individual choice but is regulated by commoncategories. But whereas, for Kant, phenomena conform to fixed categories, phenomenahere lend themselves to various patterns of arrangement (Kuhn 1991, 264; Kuhn 1993,331; Irzik and Grnberg 1998). Proponents of two incommensurable paradigms inev-itably use incompatible patterns of arrangements of the shared set of elements (be theyobservations, tools, measurements, terms, or theories). This global incommensurabil-ity does not seem to be mitigated by the qualification that only in some areas they seedifferent things, because proponents of incommensurable paradigms would eventu-ally practice their trades in different worlds (Kuhn 1970, 150). A relatively small set ofterms are the locales of incommensurability but they make for global incommensura-bility because they introduce a sweeping rearrangement of the relations between theelements of the shared background. The conceptualization of the relation betweenlocal and global incommensurability will prove to be a source of major difficulties forKuhn, but I shall return to this shortly.4

The aesthetic analogy, though expressive of the relation between a shared back-ground and global incommensurability, is not without limitation. While the subject ofgestalt experiments appeals to an external measure (the lines on the paper for example)

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against which he can switch back and forth between the multiple interpretations of thelines, the scientist has no access to such external criteria. The scientist has no recourseabove 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 ofinterpretation, the scientist can only see an interpreted world. Lacking such externalmeasure, the interpretive character of scientific knowledge is brought to the fore, andcontextually removed scientists end up dealing with entirely distinct phenomena whilegazing in the same direction from the same point. Understanding the phenomena of anincommensurable paradigm would then require more than an adjustment of onesgaze. It seems to require that one learns all what the paradigm defines: acceptable prob-lems, standards, theories, values, metaphysical commitments, professional institu-tions, and world. But if one is immersed in ones own paradigm, with no access tosomething 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 allowingpartial communication between adherents of incommensurable paradigms and local-izing the areas which they see differently. Kuhn thinks that this much is needed in theway of a shared background to facilitate the understanding of an incommensurableparadigm. But the qualification here is rather vague on several related questions, mostimportantly: how does this understanding take place if shared terms fall within a newnetwork of other terms and therefore acquire a new meaning, a different sense of rele-vance to the theory, and so on? And what is the epistemic status of the understandingthat results from the switch into some distinct world? Does it mean acquiring some-thing like the determinate perspective of the native? Or is it taken to be one possibleinterpretation of the natives perspective? These questions are important to pursuebecause although the general attitude in Structure is hostile to objectivism in science, itremains ambivalent towards the objectivity of historiography.

The weakness of Kuhns qualifications of the thesis in Structure invited much criti-cism. Of this massive literature, Kuhn identifies two lines of argument against theaesthetic account that motivated the linguistic turn.5 The first argument states thatincommensurability implies incomparability; this renders appeal to arguments fromevidence as a basis of theory choice a futile enterprise. Thus, this argument goes, ashared background must be assumed which in turn falsifies the thesis of incommensu-rability (Shapere 1966; Scheffler 1967, 8189; Davidson 1974, 520). A second line ofargument holds that incommensurability implies an inability to understand oldertheories in modern terms, but this is exactly what a historiographer of science does inrestructuring older theories. Thus, this camp holds, incommensurability cannot bedefended (Davidson 1974, 1720; Kitcher 1978; Putnam 1981). If either of these argu-ments is accepted, Kuhn must give up either his historical project or his incommensu-rability thesis. In other words, he must give up either the project or its philosophicalbasis. Willing to give up neither, Kuhn continued to reformulate the notion of incom-mensurability in the hope that it would narrow the gap between his perspective as ahistorian and as a philosopher.

The strength of the objections lies in pressing Kuhn to be clear about the relationbetween global incommensurability (that scientists practice their trades in different

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worlds), and local incommensurability (that there is substantive overlap between para-digms that facilitates mutual understanding). Closely related to this issue, Kuhn ispressed to make clear how localizing the areas which scientists see differently makesfor incommensurability and not, for example, a simple bridgeable difference of opin-ion or opposition between closely related perspectives. And finally, the objectionsinvite the reflexive move from historiography to an account of the status of the histo-riographers own understanding and whether it is an objective reflection of the nativesstance, or merely one possible interpretation of it.

Kuhn argues that both arguments rest on conflating interpretation with mechanicaltranslation, whereas the historiographers task is contextual interpretation rather thanmechanical translation. Kuhn also attempts to show the compatibility of incommen-surability and comparability by introducing a theory of meaning that is supposed toenable a clearer account of local incommensurability and allow for the mutualunderstanding of contextually removed parties. This is what many called Kuhnslinguistic turn.

2.2. Linguistic Turn

In this account, all talk of paradigms, gestalt switches, and an overarching globalincommensurability is replaced by talk of speech communities, partial changes ofmeaning, and local incommensurability. Incommensurability now takes place, notbetween paradigms or whole theories, but between a small subset of inter-definedterms. Members of a speech community share a structured vocabulary of kind-termswhich represents a taxonomy of natural kinds (Kuhn 1983a, 68283; Kuhn 1991, 45).Kind-terms are those taxonomic terms which have two properties: they are lexicallyidentified by taking the indefinite article, and the relations between them are governedby the no-overlap principle (Kuhn 1991, 4). The last formulation of this principlestates that only terms which belong to the same contrast set are prohibited fromoverlapping in membership. Male and horse may overlap but not horse andcow (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 kindterms. While members of a speech community define kind terms the same way, theymay nevertheless have compatible but dissimilar exemplars for these kind-terms.Incommensurability in this case is redefined as the violation of the no-overlap princi-ple, or the referring of a kind term to referents denied by the taxonomy of the othertheory. Communicative breakdown is now described as follows:

Applied to the conceptual vocabulary deployed in and around a scientific theory, theterm incommensurability functions metaphorically. The phrase no commonmeasure becomes no common language. The claim that two theories are incom-mensurable is then the claim that there is no language, neutral or otherwise, intowhich both theories, conceived as sets of sentences, can be translated without residueor loss. No more in its metaphorical than its literal form does incommensurabilityimply incomparability, and much for the same reason. Most of the terms common to

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the two theories function the same way in both; their meanings, whatever those maybe, are preserved; their translation is simply homophonic. Only for a small subgroupof (usually interdefined) terms and for sentences containing them do problems oftranslatability arise. [] The terms that preserve their meanings across a theorychange provide a sufficient basis for the discussion of differences and for compari-sons relevant to theory choice. They even provide [], a basis from which the mean-ings of incommensurable terms can be explored. (Kuhn 1983, 67071)

Incommensurability here becomes the failure of statement-for-statement correlationbetween two theories. This takes place when the corresponding language communitiesdo not share a homology of lexical structure, referring expressions and a taxonomicsystem. Where we fail to translate, for absence of common kind terms, or for the viola-tion of the no-overlap condition, contextual interpretation is needed to save the day.

The move towards local holism is intended to expand the shared backgroundbetween rival paradigms in the hope of rendering the process of understanding anincommensurable paradigm clearer than it had been in Structure. Here, the histori-ographer is allowed ample access to a shared background through which he maycome to understand locales of incommensurability. Note that the locales of incom-mensurability no longer prompt a large-scale rearrangement of the shared back-ground; shared terms preserve their meanings across theory change. This shift isquite significant and, as I will show in the next section, is quite destructive of thenotion of incommensurability itself. The historiographer is now faced with a poten-tially recognizable theory that only requires a bit of imaginative historical sense. Butin this process of understanding, the historiographer does not translate the oldertheory into the modern one, but he learns the older theory as one learns a secondlanguage: as a whole.

Appealing to second-language acquisition as a model for interpretive success ismeant 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, bylearning 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 aprocess of contextual interpretation (Kuhn 1983, 67677). The success of the interpre-tive task is marked by our ability to identify the referents of the terms in question, thelexical structures of the target language, the categories of its taxonomic system, andfinally, to understand how the whole theory made sense to its followers. Interpretivesuccess, then, entails understanding how the world of the followers of the theory inquestion was constituted, to render it transparent. However, understanding in this caseproduces not an enrichment of the source language but bilingualism. Bilingualism isinevitable in this case, Kuhn holds, because: if the members of a language communityencounter a dog thats also a cat (or more realistically, a creature like the duck-billedplatypus), they cannot just enrich the set of category terms but must instead redesign apart of the taxonomy (Kuhn 1991, 4). Although this partial redesigning need not entaillarge-scale changes, it remains incompatible with the source language and cannot behomogenized with it. Languages will continue to be separated in these areas, and no

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bridging is structurally possible. Only individual interpreters can cross the divide, andonly by becoming members of the target speech community.

Despite his denial of the possibility that one language could ultimately containanother by enriching its expressive capacities, Kuhn insists that bilingualism does notpreclude comparability. Kuhn holds that incommensurable magnitudes can becompared 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 lessthan 1.5 (rational numbers).6 Comparing incommensurable theories can then proceedaccording to the level of disparity of the relevant terms. Where locals of incommensu-rability are absent, comparison can take place by the immediate comparison of theempirical consequences of the two theories, and the shared vocabulary can support thistask despite the distinct conceptual patterns. Where the historiographer is faced withlocals of incommensurability, they need to learn the new vocabulary in its historicalcontext as a second language is learned. But although understanding in this case stillprecludes statement for statement translation into modern terms and thereforeprecludes statement for statement comparisons, appeal to global criteria of compara-bility can still be made. Theories in this case may be compared according to externalvalues like simplicity, accuracy, fruitfulness, and predictive power (Hoyningen-Huene1990, 48990). This way, Kuhn thinks, both arguments against him are resolved. Onthe one hand, incommensurability does not preclude a shared background and thecomparability of theories, and on the other hand understanding locales of incommen-surability does not entail translating them into modern language. Though thisapproach has been subjected to much scrutiny, some of its devastating consequencesare 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 incommen-surability. Focusing on a main Kuhnian premise, that there may be a final reading ofhistorical material, I shall proceed by rejecting the prospect of going native and thedistinction between translation and interpretation as Kuhn envisions it, and I shalloffer an analysis of what I call the paradox of incommensurability. Second, I turn to abrief account of adequacy requirements that enable an account of incommensurabilityto escape the objections raised against Kuhn.

Three main problems can be spotted in the linguistic account of incommensurabil-ity. First, the earlier problem of the standpoint of the historiographer becomes morepressing.7 The oversimplification of the notion of language acquisition for a personwho is already a member of a language game dissolves the distinction between thenative and the interpreter in an important respect. As a member of a language game, aperson 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 sourcelanguage. Sankey argues that learning a second language requires no mediation by thesource language, pointing to the fact that children acquire their mother tonguedirectly, not by translating from one language to another, and on evidence suggesting

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that bilingualsdefined as those who are equally competent in two languagesrequire no translation back and forth between two languages because neither languagemerits the status of home language (Sankey 1991, 418).

But like the linguistic Kuhn, Sankey commits two errors regarding a sourcelanguage. While I agree with Sankey that learning the source language does not involvetranslation into a prior language, it acquires the status of source language by virtue ofthis very trait. An independent argument is needed to establish that second languageacquisition is not distinct from native linguistic conditioning. Sankey also seems toconflate mediation with translation, while mediation is a rich process that may also besubstantive or structural.

By substantive mediation I mean that a source language is acquired with substantivecontent (be it physical, moral, aesthetic, social, or psychological, to name only a fewpossibilities) that comprises a world view and mediates the successful learning of a targetlanguage. Mediation may also be structural, namely grammatical, syntactic, or seman-tic, where the influence of a source language on the acquisition of a second language iswell documented as the phenomenon of transfer or interference.8 Furthermore, asQuine (and common sense experience) has shown, at least in the initial phases of learn-ing a second language, mediation does involve translation. Granted that it is not of themechanical type that Kuhn had in mind, it still contradicts Sankeys assumption

The mediating character of the source language suggests that the outcome of second-language learning is indeterminate in principle.9 This remains the case even whenincommensurability is localized; interconnected with every other aspect of the theory,locales of incommensurability are open to an indefinite number of patterns of arrange-ment according to which an indefinite number of interpretations of the whole theorycan be said to exist.10 This is why Kuhns appeal for second-language acquisition as ifit happens without any prior initiation renders his claim more objectivistic than hispositivist adversaries. For now, we may claim to have understood an older theoryobjectively, trans-historically, trans-culturally, and trans-contextually.

In an attempt to save Kuhns going native approach from the consequences of thisobjection, Tresch (2001, 314) suggests that in hermeneutic understanding, one movesin stages along a continuum between ones familiar worldview and an alien one andsuggests that the endpoint of that continuum, that of going native is the merely idealalthough logically necessary point from which to understand both of these objects.Tresch distinguishes between attempts to understand historical and contemporarycultures as, respectively, approximating the ideal to a limited degree, and approximat-ing the ideal to the highest degree. The distinction, claims Tresch, rests on the degreeto which the actual community involved is practically accessible. Where one maybecome a validated member of the target community, both ones familiar phenomenalworld and the alien phenomenal world emerge as subjects of study. While there can beno guarantee that either could be studied objectively each would appear in somesense objectified from the point of view of the other. This, Tresch holds, enables theresearcher to engage in a double-pincered phenomenology of ways of constructingreality (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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What Tresch calls going native is really only going back home. For here again, thesecond language cannot be held on a par with the source language. Given that ourinterest in the second language remains, according to Tresch, highly ethnocentric,when objectified from the point of view of the source language, the second languageseems to be at a greater disadvantage. Tresch redefines going native from possessingequal linguistic conditioning to approximating an ideal from a prejudiced perspectiveand for ethnocentric purposes. Thus, while paying attention to the consequences oflinguistic (or paradigmatic) conditioning has been the most celebrated contributionof Structure to the philosophy of science, the linguistic turn has ironically under-mined this contribution by suggesting that by a simple act of will, one could jumpship and become a native of another language. Thus, the standpoint of the historiog-rapher remains a point of contest against Kuhn because of the indeterminacy ofinterpretation.

The second difficulty with Kuhns linguistic account is closely related to the first. Thevery distinction between translation and interpretation rests on an objectivist illusion.Recall that this is the distinction which supports the argument for local incommensu-rability. Translatable terms, it seems, are those for which there is a match in ourlanguage, while incommensurable terms are those that require interpretation. Thisfurther step is required, it seems, because we cannot find in our language a way toaccount for the subject matter. Interpreted terms can only be added to our languagein a special category, but they may not be homogenized with it or incorporated withinit. Thus, while interpretation involves understanding that is unadulterated by our first-language 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 transla-tion requires an account of the historiographers ability to escape the hermeneuticcircle. Not only does Kuhn lack such an account, he does not seem to think it is rele-vant. In the absence of obvious anomalies, the historiographers task seems to be read-ing off the structure of historical process as it really is with no interpretivecontribution on the historiographers part. Needless to say, no further complicationsseem 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 thehistoriographer and once again at the interpretation of the recipients of this re-presen-tation. Thus, indeterminacy of meaning is not only relevant to obvious locale of incom-mensurability; it is also involved in the act of translation where Kuhn seems to thinkwe are merely matching words.

If this argument is accepted, two of Kuhns celebrated contributions to the philoso-phy of science are questioned: his epistemological project, which involves subvertingthe ethnocentrism and objectivism of traditional philosophy of science, and his histor-ical project, which somehow objectively abstracts a structure of scientific revolutionsfrom history.12

The third difficulty which is derived from both arguments above is that the judge-ment on whether the relevant subsets of terms are translatable always takes place fromwithin the current tradition. This means that the judgement that the terms of onelanguage 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 grantsthis, then one must submit that whether translation is possible is itself a matter of inter-pretation.13 This hardly seems like a significant finding, but if these arguments areaccepted, 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 uniquereading of history, is subject to contest by opposing (maybe incommensurable) inter-pretations. Thus, what Kuhn views as incommensurable theories may be viewed byother historiographers as complementary, opposing, or otherwise substantively accu-mulative. The whole thesis is; therefore, subject to self-refutation. There is little doubtthat localizing incommensurability, at least in part, was motivated by Kuhns need toincrease 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 itdoes not offer a convincing argument for the distinction between local and globalincommensurability.

A radical alternative to Kuhns resolution of the paradox requires a stronger mitiga-tion of the notion of incommensurability. Rather than viewing it as a structural prob-lematic, we may take the incompatibility of world views to be a result of a technical ormethodological failing on our part. By such an account, differences between concep-tual schemes may not amount to much more than a difference of opinion that may beeasily overcome by dialogical convergence. No special linguistic competence isrequired beyond ones ability to articulate clear conceptions in ones own language.Supported by a realist streak, such a position would usually suggest that diligentlinguistic analysis and the avoidance of vagueness and equivocation can save the day.Not only has this position failed to provide a persuasive argument throughout thetwentieth century, but much of our intuitive and commonsense experience, not tomention the findings of science studies, counteract it. Despite our best efforts at clarityand methodological rigour, communication sometimes seems to be impossible with-out some special kind of effort at understanding.

Resolving the paradox of incommensurability must, therefore, account for commu-nicative breakdown while avoiding the objections raised against Kuhn. To achievethis, an account needs to satisfy at least three adequacy requirements: it must be self-referentially consistent; it must be open-ended; and finally, it must be historicallyreflexive.

For an account to be self-referentially consistent, it must describe communicativebreakdown by acceptable premises that do not contradict the very conclusions that arelegitimately drawn from them. Kuhn violates this constraint when, as pointed outabove, he argues for the interpretive step involved in understanding while arguing thatthere are final readings of historical material. This is what is referred to above as theparadox of incommensurability. To be open-ended, an account of communicativebreakdown must allow that the state of communicative breakdown may be re-described as a state of communicative success. In other words, it must allow that thedescription of a particular state of communicative breakdown is one among manypossible descriptions of the states of affairs and is not unique. Kuhn founds every oneof the premises examined above on the violation of this condition, namely, that there

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is objective meaning, that understanding entails going native, that translation withoutresidue is possible, and finally that the untranslatability of some terms is not a context-specific judgement. As for historical reflexivity, an adequate account of communicativebreakdown must allow for its own situatedness to be at once a contributing factor tocommunicative breakdown and a condition of communicative success. That is, it mustrealize that historical conditioning involves being interested in certain aspects of thetext but that this fertile by-product of historical conditioning is accompanied by ahistorical blindness or indifference to other aspects of the same text. Thus, our interestin incommensurability itself must be viewed as historically conditioned.

In the following section, I will show how Gadamerian hermeneutics satisfies theseconditions and offers us a more apt account of the compatibility of understanding andincommensurability.

3. Gadamerian Hermeneutics

This part is divided into two sections. In the first section, I offer a reading of Gadame-rian hermeneutics highlighting such key notions as traditional horizon, historicallyeffected consciousness, the universality of interpretation, alienation, dialogical open-ness, and the fusion of horizons. I will also attend to a common interpretive error thatrestricts Gadamerian hermeneutics to the Geisteswissenschaften to the total exclusion ofthe natural sciences. In the second section, I shall give a brief account of what aGadamerian hermeneutics of science can offer as a corrective to Kuhn. Then, I willshow how Gadamers account of the experience of communicative breakdown escapesthe paradox of incommensurability.

3.1. Gadamerian Account of Understanding

Gadamer thinks that aesthetic experience is the exemplary hermeneutic experiencewhere the interplay between the object of experience, the context of understanding,and understanding as a historical and linguistic event display a peculiar sort of unitywhereby the truth of the work of art, the context of understanding, and the understand-ing subject itself cannot be considered in isolation from one another. I will unpack thisconcept by offering an account of six interrelated Gadamerian notions: traditionalhorizon, historically effected consciousness, the universality of interpretation, alien-ation as the experience of communicative breakdown, dialogical openness, and thefusion of horizons.

Like the early Kuhn, Gadamer appeals to a visual metaphor to elucidate the paradox-ical boundedness and open-endedness of the context of understanding, Gadamer callsit traditional horizon. Historically and linguistically individuated, a horizon definesthe prejudices and pre-understandings with which enquiry begins; it is at once themedium through which understanding takes place, and its end product. But unlikeKuhns paradigms or taxonomic systems, the context of understanding is neither rigidnor absolute. The visual metaphor must be taken here in the stronger sense. Our visualhorizon 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 aspectsof our visual field are more highlighted than others, and how our attention is directedto certain objects rather than others. By the same token, visual experiences which lieoutside this field, and others which lie within it, may not be considered at all. Whatevermay be seen can only be seen from within this visual field, for it would be absurd tospeak of a possible visual experience without ones visual field.

The directing role of the visual field does not fixate our gaze in the same directionand on the same objects. Inherent in visual experience is the realization that the objectswill make new sense under new light. For example, by extending ones visual field, orby assuming new points of focus, new objects will come alive, new relations among theobjects which have already been taken into consideration will be revealed, and newquestions about interpretive possibilities become intrinsic aspects of the experience.Analogically, what characterizes traditional horizon is continuous motion, or continu-ous interplay between its limiting and enabling roles. The metaphor then shows, first,that no understanding shall take place without any particular horizon and, second, thatthis horizon is in continuous motion.

The limiting and enabling roles of traditional horizon show that hermeneutic expe-rience always expresses what Gadamer calls the historically effected consciousness.History operates through the act of understanding by supplying the conditions of thepossibility of understanding, and the contextual limits of this understanding as well(Gadamer 1994, 34179). To elucidate this point, one may analytically distinguishbetween a positive and negative effect for history in interpretation. The positive effectlies in supplying the conditions of the possibility of understanding, of going beyond thesubject matter, namely, by projecting the relevant questions that the text is supposed toanswer, the standards of acceptable interpretation, the operative universals in thisparticular act of understanding, and so on. The negative effect lies in providing contex-tual limitations to what may be considered here and now, and thus disables the histo-rian from inserting or eliminating aspects of the hermeneutic experience at whim. Bythis account, different people will see different things when they look at the sameobjects from within different traditional horizons because each interpretation is histor-ically situated. It is important to note here that the awareness of these effects does noteliminate them, for they can neither be fully articulated nor brought under reflectiveevaluation all at once. But the awareness of these effects enables the reflexivity of under-standing in so far as it is aware of its finitude and open-endedness.

Given the central role of historical effect, understanding a subject matter forGadamer is not the revealing of some final, unique, or objective meaning. Rather, hethinks that in every understanding, we bring the prejudices and pre-understandings ofour horizon into play and reveal a meaning in the subject matter (be it a text, thing, orperson) that both we and the subject matter have a share in it. Just as seeing is acreative process whereby it is always a seeing as, understanding is intrinsically andthoroughly constructive and contextual. All understanding involves this hermeneuticelement and is subject to hermeneutic reflection. It follows from the universality ofinterpretation that understanding is necessarily open-ended and plural. It is open-ended because what a native of one language understands of a certain text is always

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partial, prejudicial, and finite. It is the experience of this finitude that motivates open-ness to other interpretations. By the same token, understanding is plural because tradi-tional horizons are differentiated by virtue of what is handed down in their respectivelanguages, and these promote differentiated readings of the text (Gadamer 1976b, 16).Recalling the visual metaphor, the finitude of the visual field highlights both the possi-bility of going beyond this particular visual experience (by extending horizon, divertingfocus from certain objects, shifting perspective, and so on), and the possibility thatthere are other visual fields from which different visual experiences may result. Thisimplies that at each attempt at seeing, there is a different visual experience.

Guarding this contextualism against accusations of radical relativism, Gadamerpoints to the limitations of the visual analogy:

In every world view the existence of the world-in-itself is intended. It is the whole towhich linguistically schematized experience refers. The multiplicity of worldviewsdoes not involve any relativization of the world. Rather, what the world is is notdifferent from the views in which it presents itself. The relationship is the same in theperception of things. Seen phenomenologically, the thing-in-itself is, as Husserl hasshown, nothing but the continuity with which the various perceptual perspectiveson objects shade into one another. [] In the same way as with perception we canspeak of the linguistic shadings that the world undergoes in different language-worlds. But there remains a characteristic difference: every shading of the object ofperception is exclusively distinct from every other, and each helps co-constitute thething-in-itself as the continuum of these nuanceswhereas, in the case of the shad-ings of verbal world views, each one potentially contains every other one within iti.e. each world view can be extended into every other. It can understand andcomprehend, from within itself, the view of the world presented in anotherlanguage. (Gadamer 1994, 44748; emphasis added)

Here, Gadamer reconciles the multiplicity of languages, traditional horizons, orhermeneutic experiences with the possibility of mutual understanding by holding thatlanguages are not self-contained units, but are open-ended in such a way that in prin-ciple enables each to account for the others perspective. The analogy with Husserlsphenomenology of perception is revealing of two important aspects of Gadamersposition on relativism. First, is drawing our attention to the whole that is intended inthe multiplicity of verbal experiences. Languages are individuations of a universal;thus, they are essentially compatible and open-ended. But second, he reminds us to sethim apart from Husserls objectivism. Understanding cannot be the grasping of anyone thing in itself as an ideal entity independent of any linguistic context.14 The keyphrase in the passage above is within itself. In trying to understand the worldview ofa contextually removed language, our own language works at once as a barrier tounderstanding and as a facilitator thereof. It is a barrier in so far as it directs our atten-tion away from certain aspects of the text, aspects that may have central concern forothers. On the other hand, it is a facilitator to understanding in so far as it focuses ourattention 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 stan-dards of acceptability and rationality according to which interpretations are debatedand evaluated.15

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The attempt to understand, or to learn a second language, therefore, takes placefrom within our initial context, the prejudices and preconceptions of which may notbe bracketed. In learning a second language, there is a subject matter to be communi-cated, a matter that we feel directed towards by means of our traditional horizon buteludes us because it frustrates our expectations and does not quite fit with our pre-understandings. This sense of alienation from the other is at the heart of Kuhnsnotion of incommensurability. The other (as alien) presents us with the challengethat our expectations or preconceptions about the subject matter do not obtain.Gadamer thinks that the attempt to render once more the alien familiar requires ourwillingness 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 ourtraditional prejudices. Without such willingness, or what Gadamer calls dialogicalopenness, communicative breakdown is inevitable. By redefining communicativebreakdown as the lack of dialogical openness, the notion is made to refer to thehermeneutic attitude of the historiographer and, as such, provides a reflexiveperspective from which Kuhns reductive account of incommensurability may beproductively evaluated.16

A central aspect of dialogical openness, of understanding in general, is the anticipa-tion of completion. Viewed as a whole, the text must be assumed to enjoy internalunity. Such unity does not negate the possibility of internal contradictions, discontinu-ities, or open-endedness, for these could only be seen in light of an assumption ofunity.17 Partial experience of a text always takes place in light of a pre-understandingwhich is projected onto the whole/unit. As interpretation proceeds, the understandingof the whole would in turn bring the parts under new light revising their initial mean-ing. Individual traditional prejudices are then accepted as productive, or rejected asnon-productive of fruitful interpretations, but the whole tradition may not become asubject of controversy all at once. Gadamer articulates this process in terms of the ques-tion/answer dialectic, where the initial meaning of a text is assumed to be an answer tothe question that interpretation must uncover (Gadamer 1994, 26770). The tradi-tional horizon of the interpreter, or the source language in Kuhns jargon, would thensupply the presumed question, the pre-understandings with which interpretation isbegun, the standards of revisability and acceptability, the standards of internal consis-tency and unity, and so on.

Trying to understand the other would, therefore, require some accommodation onour part. Rendering the alien familiar may take place from an indefinite number ofviewpoints, all of which require expanding our traditional horizon in unexpected ways,ways that do not lend themselves to methodological prescriptions. Like the suddenrealization in the gestalt switch, rendering the alien familiar happens all at once, guidedby our traditional horizons. This process does not, as with Kuhns view, transpose theI into the Thou; rather, it expands the limits of our own language and our own hori-zons, 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 reportedas an objective documentation of a theory of historical progress, but endlessly revisableunderstanding, and an ever expanding horizon. Once the finitude and the plurality of

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understanding are acknowledged, and radical relativism eliminated by highlighting theopen-endedness of languages, dialogue becomes the model for enquiry. Dialogue forGadamer is then the mutual enrichment of the perspectives of partners in conversa-tion. Going back to the visual metaphor, this may be done by adjusting ones visualfield farther along the edges, or bringing to the fore objects that one had been ignoringin the background, or establishing new relations among objects that were not taken tobe connected in any meaningful sense.

Some object, alongside Kuhn, to the claim that the scientific language of a certaintheory may be enriched indefinitely. For example, Sankey (1991, 422) argues that natu-ral languages have indefinite expressive capacities but that special languages are limitedin this regard because they cannot accept terms that refer to entities which are deniedby the relevant theory.18 Two points are to be made in response.

The first response is that nothing in principle bars a language from representingsomething it actually or potentially denies. While an anthropologist might deny thatthe term ghost refers to an existing entity at all, it may well serve an expressive func-tion in their language. The cost at which this claim may be surrendered is to lose theability to recognize anomalies. If our language lacks expressive capacities beyondadmissible entities, then it seems necessary that the natural world always conforms toour expectations. An anomaly, by definition, is something that frustrates our expecta-tions; it frustrates the categories through which we view the world. Recognizing ananomaly, then, must require that scientific languages retain within them the capacityto recognize otherness.19 But recognizing otherness, such as a term for which there isnot a mechanical translation (to borrow a Kuhnian favourite) does require that we areat least capable of an initial description of that term.

The second response to the arguments against the openness of scientific languages isthat it works only where a scientific language is conceived as a closed system of termstightly connected by rigid designation and clearly defined laws. Only then would thelanguage prohibit importing new concepts. In his strongest statement about the rigid-ity of scientific languages, Kuhn denies that they are such closed systems. From theexample cited above (Kuhn 1991, 4), perfecting taxonomic categories happens gradu-ally whereby a group that encounters a creature not allowed by its current taxonomicstructure redesigns that part of the taxonomy so that it would fit this creature. As aresult of surrendering global incommensurability (granting for the sake of argumentthat it is possible), the perfecting of the taxonomic categories and the redesign of therelevant part of the taxonomy need not involve radical change; it may well be a part ofwhat Kuhn had called normal science, the puzzle-solving activity of the relative scien-tific community. Thus, even on Kuhns terms, languages may not be considered asclosed systems.

This conclusion is further served by recalling thatcontra the later Kuhnthere ismore to a scientific language than a taxonomic structure. A scientific language handsdown a tradition of practices, values, aspirations, and political and psychologicalcommitments, among other things. Thus, enrichment of a scientific language may takeplace via any of these aspects of a scientific tradition and may or may not induce large-scale changes in the theory.

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While Gadamer agrees that our traditional horizons are limited and finite at a partic-ular point in time, he insists that they are open-ended in principle and may potentiallycontain all other languages. The difference in perspective between Gadamer and Kuhnon this matter is fairly significant. While they both agree that different languages relateto different domains of experience, they disagree about the kind of abyss that separatesthem. For Kuhn, the other can only be known by being owned, by jumping out of onesskin and into someone elses. But for Gadamer, enriching our traditional horizonstakes place within a dialogical mode of enquiry. Only by ongoing dialogue with other-ness can we attempt reinterpretations of ourselves and of the other. The other bringsthe subject matter to bear, makes clear the distance, and displays the alienation withwhich 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 epistemicstrategy but is morally dubious. For Gadamer, the I cannot become a Thou; weremain ethnocentric and self-involved, and thus must remind ourselves of ourconstant need to be open to the otherness of the other (Gadamer 1994, 396). Ratherthan being a shortcoming of historical understanding, this realization makes for ahistorically reflexive historiographer. Reflexivity in this context is not equivalent tointerpretive transparency but guards against sweeping objectivist illusions. I shallreturn to the implications of this perspective for the historiography of science in thenext section, but first I must address a common misreading of Gadamers position onthe scope of hermeneutic reflection.

It is commonly thought that the scope of Gadamerian hermeneutics is limited to thehuman sciences to the exclusion of natural science. References are often made to theantithesis between Truth and Method that Gadamers most celebrated title suggests. Iargue that while, in his early writings, Gadamer may have had a rather nave concept ofnatural scientific methodology, and of the demarcation between natural and humansciences, he stated very clearly that natural science falls within the scope of hermeneu-tical reflection. Gadamer writes:

In the realm of the natural sciences, also, in my opinion, in the theory of knowledgeone cannot avoid the hermeneutical criticism that the given cannot be separatedfrom understanding. Even in all protocol-formulating procedures, even in so-calledperception itself, the hermeneutic understanding of something-as-something is stilloperative. (Gadamer 2001, 42)

This remark indicates that natural science and scientific methodology are intrinsicallyinterpretive. The antithesis intended in Truth and Method is that between the objectiv-istic methodological attitude of the natural sciences, and the hermeneutic attitude thatGadamer wishes to promote. More specifically, it is the antithesis between the self-understanding of natural science (as objective knowledge), and the universality ofhermeneutics (Gadamer 1976a, 2627). Given the claim that all understanding islinguistic, and therefore interpretive, scientific language cannot be excluded from thehermeneutic attitude on pains of self-contradiction (Gadamer 1994, 450). It must beconceded, though, that some of Gadamers remarks about scientific methodology andthe demarcation between natural and human sciences stand in contradiction to hisgeneral philosophical position (Gadamer 1994, 28385).

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3.2. Escaping the Paradox of Incommensurability

The most significant Gadamerian corrective is bridging the gap between Kuhns philo-sophical project and his historical project. Recall that Kuhns work is marked by a splitbetween these two projects. On the one hand, the historical project is an exercise inhermeneutic understanding, but on the other hand, the philosophical project isrestricted to a moment in hermeneutic experience; namely, the moment of alienation.The Gadamerian perspective bridges the gap by acknowledging alienation as a momentin hermeneutic experience while denying it centre stage (Gadamer 1976b, 15).

The Gadamerian account of communicative breakdown hinges on the hermeneuticattitude of understanding. When we adopt the attitude of openness to the others claimto truth, the attitude of risking some of our operative prejudices, alienation may beovercome, but once we desert the hermeneutic attitude of openness, communicativebreakdown results. Overcoming alienation is possible because languages are potentiallycompatible. Rather than trivializing our commonsense experience of radical difference,Gadamer provides us with better tools to understand it. Gadamer re-conceptualizesradical difference in terms of the perceived radical difference thereby refuting theinherent linguistic or logical gap between two languages. I shall elaborate on thisdistinction in what follows.

As has been argued above, the notions of alien, or other, do not denote somethingentirely removed from our language. Practices we call radically different may be thoseof which we cannot make sense, do not accept, or actively reject. While none of theseinstances entails that the practice falls outside the boundaries of our language, they doindicate a sense of alienation.20 The success of the attempt to overcome this alienationis contingent upon our willingness to be open to change. Methodologically, thisdictates that we continue to adjust our initial reading of the matter until we can makesense of it in a continuous interplay between the whole and the parts; between the alienand the familiar; and between the question and the answer. Given that understandingan alien practice, whether or not we accept it, always carries a considerable risking ofthe preconceptions and pre-understandings that are handed down in our language,over-emphasizing difference often compensates for our lack of openness and flexibil-ity. In the game of understanding, the players failure to understand is their failurerather than the failure of the game.

Thus, when interpretation assumes an interpretive scheme whereby no allowance ismade for change, because it assumes for itself a position of historical/epistemic superi-ority, it seems only inevitable to write the story of incommensurable scientific theories,or that of a discontinuous history. While a Gadamerian perspective might allow forviewing two static scientific theories as taxonomic systems with radically incompatiblecategories, it neither generalizes this interpretive pattern into a theory of science noraccepts the pattern as the only (or most productive) interpretive pattern for under-standing this particular subject matter.

Adopting a Gadamerian historiography of science also addresses the extent to whichscience is contextualized (Gadamer 1994, 559). It extends hermeneutic reflectionbeyond 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 seriousmanner, 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 thekinds of interpretive judgements a scientist makes in understanding and applying themethod (Gadamer 1976b, 11). These judgements, which form the central contributionof the scientist, must then be brought under hermeneutic reflection. Kuhn restrictedhis historiography to the structural study of scientific theories and to some extent to thecommunities that these theories lead, but gave no special attention to the methodologyof science as an interpretive practice.

In addition to the correctives mentioned above, the Gadamerian perspectivedefended here satisfies the adequacy requirements set in Section 2.3. First, the accountis self-referentially consistent because it establishes the universality of hermeneuticsand rejects Kuhns claim that there are final readings of historical material. Second, itis open-ended because it provides a more elastic account of communicative breakdownwhereby the particular case in point may be described as a moment of communicativebreakdown from one perspective, and as a moment of communicative success from theother. It also assigns the responsibility for such success to the historiographer and hiswillingness to be open to the other. This is significant for the history of science becauseit opens up the structural reading of history to a multitude of histories each being itselfa shading of the whole that is intended without thereby reducing languages to oneanother. From one particular perspective, two theories may appear to be incommen-surable and discontinuous, and from another accumulative and linear. The interpre-tive standards in the one case may borrow from a distinct experience of the world thanthe other.

Third is the reflexivity requirement. Gadamer holds the principle of effective historyto be a central notion in his philosophical hermeneutics. This notion allows us tosee, for example, that the historical interest in the alien is a modern concern and thatthe move from the multiplicity of horizons to cultural solipsism is not inevitable.Historically effected consciousness may be identified, for example, in the positivistsinterest in understanding the superiority of scientific method, or the linear progress ofscientific theories, whereas it may be identified in the early 1960s in the interest insubduing the authority of scientific method, and in showing the discontinuity ofhistorical eras, scientific theories, or cultural practices. In either case, there is an oper-ative prejudice guiding the interpretation of scientific history.22

Whereas this view shows that the history of science is intrinsically contextual, that itis woven within the psychological, moral, political, economic, and social horizon of aparticular tradition, Kuhns account stripped it of hermeneutic significance andreduced it to an analysis of scientific taxonomies.23 The turn to hermeneutics wouldthen indicate a move a way from the reductive into the richer and thicker account ofscience.

If the arguments presented here are accepted, the philosophy and the historiographyof science must recover the centrality of their hermeneutic dimension by redirectingtheir driving questions and re-envisioning their relationship. The split between theepistemic questions that motivate traditional philosophy of science, and the historical

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questions that motivate the historiography of science overlooks the interpretive char-acter of all understanding. But given the Gadamerian perspective defended here, theperipheral position of the historical in relation to the epistemic, as typically depicted inthe 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 ofthe historical and the epistemic. This merger paves the path for a new hermeneutics ofscience 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 ofLogic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science, August, 2003. I would like to thank theparticipants of the conference who were most generous with their questions and objec-tions. I would also like to acknowledge the contribution of the anonymous referees ofISPS 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 ofFeyerabend, 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 betweentwo senses of the word experience: an epistemological sense that involves the organiza-tional role of language, and a physiological sense which pertains to the causal processinvolved in perception (Malone 1993, 8183). Malone suggests that the problem of incom-mensurability pertains to the epistemic not the physiological sense of experience, sinceobservations are not theory-laden in the sense that undermines objectivity. The argumentbegs the question, since it needs to show rather than assume that observations are nottheory-laden.

[4] For a detailed look at the distinction between global and local incommensurability, seeSimmons (1994, 12021). Simmons suggests that local incommensurability excludes globalincommensurability because of the substantive overlap between the rival theories. But itremains 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 willnot be pursued here.

[6] See Sharrock and Read (2002, 14143), for a detailed account of the mathematical origin ofthe concept.

[7] Hoyningen-Huene (1990, 49192) raises this issue against Kuhn and argues that a generaltheory of world constitution requires that the historiographer brackets all elementsfrom their own particular world, but that such bracketing is impossible on pains of self-contradiction.

[8] For a thorough survey of recent research on the phenomenon of transfer and the differentways 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 Acquisi-tion seems to give significant credence to theories of conceptual relativity whereby the under-standing of the target language is mediated by the source language.

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[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 casesKuhn suggests are the ones that require conscious contextual interpretation where a uniquemeaning is uncovered.

[10] This argument shows that Kuhns account of local incommensurability can only be acceptedat the cost of denying the interconnectedness of theoretical terms.

[11] Hesse anticipates this objection when she suggests that Kuhns distinction between translationand interpretation is not as sharp as he makes it. Hesse thinks that communication betweenlanguages adopting different taxonomies need not assume an identity of shared taxonomy; asufficient intersection between the relevant taxonomies would do (Hesse 1983, 708).

[12] For passages in Structure against the ethnocentric attitude of tradition historiography ofscience and of science textbooks, see Kuhn (1970, 126, 138, 140). In later writings, Kuhnseems to think that he can establish his philosophical position a priori without appealing tothe 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 first-order statements like no translation exists for term x, nor to second-order statements likethere is a structure to scientific theories.

[14] For a wonderful exposition of Gadamers ontology of language as anti-objectivist, seeKertscher (2002, 13549). It must be noted, though, that Kertschers opposition betweentruth and tradition misses the very point of the contextualism Gadamer espouses. This will beexamined 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 ratherthan a defect in the account. I submit that Fullers diagnosis of the narrowness of the accountas symptomatic of the Cold War eras turn away from the politics of knowledge productionprovides 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 anaive 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 enrichinga source language by adding categories it flatly denies would make for a self-contradictorylanguage that will perish along with its users. The major error Kuhn commits here is conflat-ing enrichment with the acceptance of categories, but with the taxonomic account of languagethat Kuhn supports such conflation seems necessary.

[19] To be sure, Structure (Kuhn 1970, 5291) describes the ways in which a scientific communityidentifies and deals with anomalies.

[20] A classic example of this is the psychoanalytic notion of projection where otherness is reviledfor mirroring ones own flaws. This is a case where alienation (from the other and fromoneself) is not a result of a linguistic incompatibility but a result of our unwillingness to makethe 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 tobe taken seriously. In the philosophy of science since Thomas Kuhn this point has been widelydiscussed. I think this is above all because natural scientific methods do not show us how toapply 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 significantlycontributed to the death of philosophical history, and managed to reverse the attention awayfrom the politics of knowledge production in the philosophy of science.

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[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 awayfrom the social towards the reductive is a case in which the effect of tradition (here the tradi-tion in which Kuhn was initiated into philosophy) is displayed.

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