Incommensurability

Incommensurability in philosophy refers to the idea that it is possible to see the world in multiple ways, and that there is not, or not always, an impartial method of determining which view is true.

The idea that scientific paradigms are incommensurable was popularized by the philosopher Thomas Kuhn in his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. He suggested that when paradigms change, the world changes with them. In that case, it is impossible to compare the validity of scientific paradigms from a neutral point of view, because there is no agreement between the paradigms about the data and the methods that are to be used to evaluate their validity.

The philosophy of Paul Feyerabend was also based on the idea of incommensurability to a large extent. Feyerabend argued that frameworks of thought (including scientific paradigms) can be incommensurable for three reasons. In the first place, the interpretation of observations is implicitly influenced by theoretical assumptions. It is therefore impossible to describe or evaluate observations independent of theory. In the second place, paradigms often have different assumptions about which intellectual and operational scientific methods result in valid scientific knowledge. In the third place, paradigms can be based on different assumptions regarding the structure of their domain, which makes it difficult to compare them in a meaningful way. According to Feyerabend, the idea of incommensurability cannot be captured in formal logic, because it is a phenomenon outside of its domain.

See also commensurable for the primary, mathematical meaning.

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