Pablo Melogno

This book presents essays and commentaries that continue on Thomas Kuhn’s work from where he left off at the time of his death. Contrary to other books, this volume picks up the gauntlet to develop, from a contemporary perspective, some points that can be improved in the light of recent findings and conceptualizations in metatheory. Thus, this work pays a visit to the classical Kuhnian landscapes, but rather proposing interpretations, it takes them as the starting point to go further. One hundred years after Kuhn's birth, the editors and authors rekindle the passion and interest that have always surrounded the work of the great Boston philosopher and historian.

This paper examines ‘The Natures of Conceptual Change’, the Notre Dame lectures given by Kuhn in 1980. In particular, I aim to examine the content of these lectures which was not published before. This exegetical task will shed light on the sources of the notion of taxonomy used in these lectures for the first time with the explicit philosophical purposes. It also will shed new light on Kuhn's position regarding the causal theory of reference. Reviewing these archival materials paves the way for intertextual comparisons, as Kuhn included part of these lectures in the texts published later and in the book Plurality of Worlds: an Evolutionary Theory of Scientific Development. In recent years, the publication of Kuhn's archival material and the research on these texts increased in quantity and quality. Faced with this encouraging landscape, a comparative examination of the different unpublished texts is crucial to refining both our research tools on Kuhn's intellectual biography and the philosophical work inspired by his proposal.

This paper explores Thomas Kuhn’s intellectual history by examining sources that have been understudied so far: the Lowell Lectures of 1951 (The Quest for Physical Theory) and the hitherto unpublished Notre Dame Lectures of 1980. The analysis of these texts aims to reconstruct Kuhn’s development of a semantics that can account for scientific progress. This analysis will show that the alleged “linguistic turn” attributed to the author is actually a renewed interest in problems that existed well before publishing The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

In “A Defense of Structure in Structure of Scientific Revolutions,” Prof. K. Brad Wray discusses the critical interpretation introduced by Lorraine Daston on the importance of Kuhn for historians of science, and specifically the usefulness of the Kuhnian notion of structure. According to Daston, the notion of structure in SSR became important due to the popularity of the term in social sciences when Kuhn wrote the book. Daston argues that the very idea of a structure has been abandoned both in history and social sciences, and therefore its use in SSR has become unacceptable. In this comment, I intend to vindicate the notion of structure in Kuhn’s work through a discussion with objectives analogous to Wray’s, but with differences in method and scope. First, I shall examine some implicit assumptions in Wray’s discussion. Secondly, I shall attempt to situate the discussion of Kuhn’s notion of structure in the historiographical realm, and not only within philosophy.

En 1983 Thomas Kuhn introdujo la distinción entre interpretación y traducción, con el propósito de fortalecer la tesis de la inconmensurabilidad y responder a objeciones formuladas por Donald Davidson y Hilary Putnam. A partir de este contexto de debate, este trabajo revisa la distinción kuhniana con el objetivo de explorar las conexiones que pueden establecerse entre las teorías rivales y las comunidades científicas que las defienden. Para ello examino el papel de la traducción, la interpretación y la comunicación en el cambio teórico, con el propósito de ampliar la distinción de Kuhn y ahondar en algunas consecuencias no contempladas en su planteo original. Concluyo que la distinción entre estos planos lingüísticos resulta fundamental para comprender y evaluar el alcance de las divergencias suscitadas en casos de inconmensurabilidad.

El problema de determinar cuál es el método de la Ciencia de la Información ha sido objeto de distintos abordajes y propuestas metodológicas. En este trabajo defendemos que dichos problemas usualmente se han planteado de manera errónea, y que su planteo no contribuye a una mejora del campo. Comenzamos con un recorrido por diferentes propuestas metodológicas, señalando el consenso existente sobre el impacto de la indagación metodológica en el status científico de la disciplina. Luego rastreamos la influencia del positivismo en la metodología de la CI, sosteniendo que la concepción positivista del método científico aún sigue gobernando de forma implícita la autopercepción epistemológica de la disciplina. Finalmente ensayamos una lectura de algunos problemas metodológicos basada en la filosofía de Thomas Kuhn, enfatizando que no es la reflexión metodológica, sino el desarrollo de una tradición exitosa de resolución de problemas lo que consolida el status científico.

I will present a comparative analysis between Thomas Kuhn's The Copernican Revolution published in 1957 and The Structure of Scientific Revolutions published in 1962, ir order to identify divergences in the views contained in each work. I shall set forth a comparative analysis of the historiographical assumptions employed by Kuhn in each of his books. I will explore some proposals which have pointed out several discontinuities between both books, as I introduce some tools to widen this interpretative trend. I will argue that although Kuhn’s work in 1957 contains some concerns and problems which anticipate his later stances, these anticipations coexist with historiographical formulations and premises which are incompatible with the core of SSR. Therefore, I will assert that Kuhn adopts different historiographical frameworks in CR and in SSR. Finally, I will conclude that these differences are expressions of Kuhn's adoption of a more externalist view in the former, and a more internalist frame in the latter.

Resumen: Janet Folina ha propuesto una interpretación del convencionalismo de Poincaré contraria a la que ofrecen Michael Friedman y Robert DiSalle. Ambos afirman que la propuesta de Poincaré queda refutada por la relati-vidad general pues supone una noción restrictiva de los principios a priori. Folina sostiene que el convencionalismo de Poincaré no es contradictorio con la relatividad general porque permite una noción relativizada de los princi-pios a priori. Intento mostrar que la estrategia de Folina es ineficaz porque Poincaré no puede explicar el papel de la variedad de Riemann en la rela-tividad general. Concluyo que la tentativa de reconstruir el desarrollo de la relatividad general a partir de la filosofía de Poincaré puede constituir un obs-táculo para comprender la radicalidad del cambio que la relatividad generó en las relaciones entre física y geometría.: Janet Folina has proposed an interpretation of Poincaré’s conven-tionalism against Michael Friedman and Robert DiSalle. They both state that Poincaré’s proposal is refuted by general relativity, since it implies a restrictive notion of a priori principles. Folina claims that Poincaré’s conventionalism is not in conflict with general relativity because from Poincaré’s proposal it is possible to extract a relativized notion of a priori principles. I intend to show that Folina’s strategy is ineffective due to Poincaré’s inability to explain the role of Riemann manifold in general relativity. I conclude that the attempt to reconstruct the development of general relativity from Poincaré’s philosophy may be an obstacle to understanding the radical nature of the change that relativity brought to the relationship between physics and geometry.

I will examine the first of Thomas Kuhn’s Thalheimer Lectures delivered in 1984, with the purpose of establishing a connection between Kuhn’s historiographical thought and his criticism of the traditional distinction between the context of discovery and the context of justification, or, as I call it, the DJ distinction. In order to do this, I will start by exploring the Kuhnian view of the so-called static approach in philosophy of science, taking as my main reference the work of Bacon, Descartes, and foundationalist epistemology. I will continue by examining the relationship between Kuhnian historiography and the DJ distinction, comparing the first Thalheimer Lecture with other texts published by Kuhn. Finally, I will assert that Kuhn’s rejection of the DJ distinction is the result of adopting a historiographical matrix whose philosophical consequences are irreconcilable with the static approach in history and philosophy of science, for which the DJ distinction is essential.