Abstract
The (dynamic) frame model, originating in artificial intelligence and cognitive psychology, has recently been applied to change-phenomena traditionally studied within history and philosophy of science. Its application purpose is to account for episodes of conceptual dynamics in the empirical sciences (allegedly) suggestive of incommensurability as evidenced by “ruptures” in the symbolic forms of historically successive empirical theories with similar classes of applications. This article reviews the frame model and traces its development from the feature list model. Drawing on extant literature, examples of frame-reconstructed taxonomic change are presented. This occurs for purposes of comparison with an alternative tool, conceptual spaces. The main claim is that conceptual spaces save the merits of the frame model and provide a powerful model for conceptual change in scientific knowledge, since distinctions arising in measurement theory are native to the model. It is suggested how incommensurability as incomparability of theoretical frameworks might be avoided (thus coming on par with a key-result of applying frames). Moreover, as non(inter-)translatability of world-views, it need not to be treated as a genuine problem of conceptual representation. The status of laws vis à vis their dimensional bases as well as diachronic similarity measures are (inconclusively) discussed.
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Notes
- 1.
“In the Ray taxonomy, for example, the attributes beak and foot are not independent. There are correlations between the value of beak and that of foot: webbed feet are usually associated with a round beak, and clawed feet with a pointed beak. These are physical constraints imposed by nature: webbed feet and round beaks are adapted to the environment in which water-birds live, but clawed feet and pointed beaks would be a hindrance in water. Because of these constraint relations, the attributes beak and foot must be used together as a cluster in classification” (Chen 2002, p. 6).
- 2.
“Influenced by Darwin’s evolutionary theory, ornithologists realized that many morphological characters used as classification standards in previous taxonomies were arbitrary, and they began to search for new classification criteria that could display the origins of birds” (Chen 2002, p. 12).
- 3.
“Consequently, communication obstacles were bound to occur between the followers of the two systems. The followers of the Ray taxonomy, for example, would regard ‘grallatores’ from the Sundevall taxonomy as incommensurable, because they could not find an equivalent native term with referents that do not overlap those of the foreign one. Both ‘water-bird’ and ‘land-bird’ from the old taxonomy overlap ‘grallatores,’ which includes water-birds like herons as well as landbirds like storks. On the other hand, the followers of the Sundevall taxonomy would regard ‘water-bird’ from the Ray taxonomy as confusing, because they could not find an equivalent native term without violating the non-overlap principle. Sundevall’s ‘natatores’ overlaps Ray’s ‘waterbird’; specifically, the former is included by the latter, but they are not in species-genus relations” (Chen 2002, p. 9).
- 4.
Since F = ma holds, some values can be inferred, e.g., for the three force dimensions.
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Acknowledgements
I thank the organizers of CTF 09, the editors of this volume and two anonymous reviewers, as well as Laurence Barsalou, Peter Gärdenfors, Joel Parthemore, Gerhard Schurz, Gregor Strle and Ionnis Votsis for support, insightful comments, and criticism. Research was funded by the Swedish Research Council (VR).
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Zenker, F. (2014). From Features via Frames to Spaces: Modeling Scientific Conceptual Change Without Incommensurability or Aprioricity. In: Gamerschlag, T., Gerland, D., Osswald, R., Petersen, W. (eds) Frames and Concept Types. Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy, vol 94. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-01541-5_3
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