Editing Relativism (section)

=====Thomas Kuhn=====
[[Thomas Samuel Kuhn|Thomas Kuhn]]'s philosophy of science, as expressed in ''[[The Structure of Scientific Revolutions]]'', is often interpreted as relativistic. He claimed that, as well as progressing steadily and incrementally ("[[normal science]]"), science undergoes periodic revolutions or "[[paradigm shift]]s", leaving scientists working in different paradigms with difficulty in even communicating. Thus the truth of a claim, or the existence of a posited entity, is relative to the paradigm employed. However, it is not necessary for him to embrace relativism because every paradigm presupposes the prior, building upon itself through history and so on. This leads to there being a fundamental, incremental, and referential structure of development which is not relative but again, fundamental.

:From these remarks, one thing is however certain: Kuhn is not saying that incommensurable theories cannot be compared - what they can't be is compared in terms of a system of common measure. He very plainly says that they can be compared, and he reiterates this repeatedly in later work, in a (mostly in vain) effort to avert the crude and sometimes catastrophic misinterpretations he suffered from mainstream philosophers and post-modern relativists alike.<ref>{{cite web| url = http://www.uea.ac.uk/~j339/Kuhntogo.htm| title = Sharrock. W., Read R. ''Kuhn: Philosopher of Scientific Revolutions''}}</ref>

But Kuhn rejected the accusation of being a relativist later in his postscript:

:scientific development is ... a unidirectional and irreversible process. Later scientific theories are better than earlier ones for solving puzzles ... That is not a relativist's position, and it displays the sense in which I am a convinced believer in scientific progress.<ref>Kuhn (1962), ''[[The Structure of Scientific Revolutions]]'', p. 206.</ref>

Some have argued that one can also read Kuhn's work as essentially positivist in its ontology: the revolutions he posits are epistemological, lurching toward a presumably 'better' understanding of an objective reality through the lens presented by the new paradigm. However, a number of passages in ''Structure'' do indeed appear to be distinctly relativist, and to directly challenge the notion of an objective reality and the ability of science to progress towards an ever-greater grasp of it, particularly through the process of paradigm change.

:In the sciences there need not be progress of another sort. We may, to be more precise, have to relinquish the notion, explicit or implicit, that changes of paradigm carry scientists and those who learn from them closer and closer to the truth.<ref>Kuhn, ''[[The Structure of Scientific Revolutions]]'', p. 170.</ref>

:We are all deeply accustomed to seeing science as the one enterprise that draws constantly nearer to some goal set by nature in advance. But need there be any such goal? Can we not account for both science's existence and its success in terms of evolution from the community's state of knowledge at any given time? Does it really help to imagine that there is some one full, objective, true account of nature and that the proper measure of scientific achievement is the extent to which it brings us closer to that ultimate goal?<ref>Kuhn, ''[[The Structure of Scientific Revolutions]]'', p. 171.</ref>