Abstract
In his article ‘Commensurability, Comparability, Communicability’, Thomas Kuhn distinguishes between translation and interpretation and indicates that some of his critics incorrectly equate the two notions.1 Translation involves an interpretive component, but it is not the same as interpretation. Interpreting a culture, language, scientific theory or paradigm may involve learning a new language or possibly an earlier version of the interpreter’s own language. According to Kuhn, however, learning a new language is not the same as translating it into the interpreter’s own language. Interpreting does not imply translating. On the other hand, incommensurability in this article means the lack of an adequate translation: there is no language into which the two languages or theories in question can be translated without residue.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
W. Balzer, C.-U. Moulines and J. D. Sneed. An Architectonic for Science, D. Reidel, Dordrecht, 1987.
D. A. Bonevac. Reduction in the Abstract Sciences, Hackett Publishing Co., Indianapolis—Cambridge, 1982.
C. Glymour. On some patterns of reduction. Philosophy of Science, 37, 340353, 1970.
N. Goodman. Fact, Fiction and Forecast, Harvester Press, Sussex, 1979.
J. Hintikka. The Semantics of Questions and the Questions of Semantics. Acta Philosophica Fennica, Vol. 28, North-Holland Publishing Co., Amsterdam, 1976.
T. S. Kuhn. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd Edition, enlarged. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1970.
T. S. Kuhn. Commensurability, comparability, communicability. In PSA 82, P. Asquith and T. Nickles, eds. Philosophy of Science Association, East Lansing, 1983.
T. S. Kuhn. Afterwords. In World Changes. Thomas Kuhn and the Nature of Science, ed P. Horwich, pp. 311–341. The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1993.
D. Lewis. Counterfactuals, Blackwell, Oxford, 1973.
D. Pearce. Translation, Reduction and Equivalence: Some Topics in Intertheory Relations, University of Sussex, 1979.
D. Pearce. Roads to Commensurability, D. Reidel, Dordrecht, 1987.
D. Pearce and V. Rantala. New foundations for metascience. Synthese, 56, 126, 1983.
D. Pearce and V. Rantala. A logical study of the correspondence relation. Journal of Philosophical Logic, 13, 47–84, 1984.
D. Pearce and V. Rantala. Limiting-case correspondence between physical theories. In Reduction in Science, W. Balzer, D. Perace and H.-J. Schmidt, eds, pp. 153–185. D. Reidel, Dordrecht, 1984.
D. Pearce and V. Rantala. Approximate explanation is deductive-nomo- logical. Philosophy of Science, 52, 126–140, 1985.
V. Rantala. The old and the new logic of metascience. Synthese, 39, 233–247, 1978.
V. Rantala. Scientific change and change of logic. In Intensional Logic, History of Philosophy, and Methodology. To Imre Ruzsa on the Occasion of his 65th Birthday, I. M. Bodnar, A. Mate and L. Polos, eds., pp. 247–252, Budapest, 1988.
V. Rantala. Counterfactual reduction. In Imre Lakatos and Theories of Scientific Change, K. Gavroglu, Y. Goudaroulis and P. Nicolacopoulos, eds. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, 1989.
V. Rantala. Reduction and explanation: Science vs. Mathematics. In The Space of Mathematics. Philosophical, Epistemological, and Historical Explorations, J. Echeverria, A. Ibarra and T. Morman, eds., pp. 47–59, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin, 1992.
V. Rantala. Translation and scientific change. In Theories and Models in Scientific Processes, (Poznan Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and Humanities, Vol. 44), W. E. Herfel, W. Krajewski, I. Niiniluoto and R. Wójcicki, eds., pp. 249–268, Rodopi, Amsterdam, 1995.
V. Rantala. Explanatory translation and conceptual change. In Methods of Reading, I. Koskinen, E. Oesch and T. Vadén, eds. Tampere, 1995.
V. Rantala and T. Vadén. Idealization in cognitive science. A study in counterfactual correspondence. In Idealization VII: Structuralism, Idealization and Approximation, (Poznan Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and Humanities, Vol. 42), M. Kuokkanen, ed., pp. 179–200, Rodopi, Amsterdam, 1994.
H. Rott. On relations between successive theories. In Abstracts of the LMPS 87, Vol. 4, Part 2, pp. 123–127. Moscow 1987.
E. Scheibe. The Logical Analysis of quantum Mechanics, Pergamon Press, Oxford, 1973.
M. Scriven. Explanations, predictions and laws. In Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Vol 3, pp. 170— 230, H. Feigl and G. Maxwell, eds. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1962.
M. Sintonen. The Pragmatics of Scientific Explanation. Acta Philosophica Fennica, Vol. 37, Helsinki, 1984.
R. Tuomela. Theoretical Concepts. Springer-Verlag, Wien-New York, 1973.
B.L. van der Waerden. Introduction. In Sources of Quantum Mechanics, B. L. van der Waerden, ed., Dover Publications Inc., New York, 1967.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1996 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Rantala, V. (1996). Understanding Scientific Change. In: Bystrov, P.I., Sadovsky, V.N. (eds) Philosophical Logic and Logical Philosophy. Synthese Library, vol 257. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-8678-8_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-8678-8_1
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-90-481-4762-5
Online ISBN: 978-94-015-8678-8
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive