HPS250H1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Japanese Addressing System, Thomas Kuhn, Phlogiston Theory
17 Apr 2016
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Popper on theory choice: choose theory that has corroborated excess empirical content, comparing theories are not always comparable. Thomas kuhn: theories are often incommensurable: hard to tell which theories have more empirical content. Incommesurability: duck rabbit: do you see duck or rabbit, kuhn says that if you believe in different theories, than your experiences are so different from each other that it"s too hard to compare. Incommensurability: two theories are incommensurable when there is no translation from the language of one theory to the language of the other: just b/c two theories speak diff languages doesn"t mean incommensurable, there can be relation somehow. Taxonomy: theory has two major constituents: Laws: a taxonomy contains some fundamental concepts (ex. space) and derivative concepts (ex. position) ^ex. for newtonian taxonomy: taxonomy: set of interconnected concepts (netting that a theory throws on the world ) Kuhn"s world refers to the world of phenomena: general relativity:
