Why psychology failed to become a paradigmatic science

Introduction

If we consider Kuhn's mature account of incommensurability from the viewpoint of cognitive science, extending the approach taken in our previous paper, we find again that research in psychology and cognitive science clarifies the cognitive phenomenon of incommensurability and lends additional support to Kuhn's position. We will elaborate the notion of incommensurability, the central theme of Kuhn's theory of scientific revolutions, according to two different cognitive models of concept representation. This will allow us to support Kuhn's later view that incommensurability can be caused by changes in only a few concepts, that even incommensurable conceptual systems can be rationally compared, and that scientific change of the most radical sort-the type labeled revolutionary in earlier studiesdoes not have to occur holistically and abruptly, but can be achieved by a historically more plausible accumulation of smaller changes (Andersen, 347).

The Development Of Kuhn's Concept Of Incommensurability

The most important concept in Kuhn's account of science omitted in Figure 1 is the concept of incommensurability. For many people this is the central notion of Kuhn's theory of scientific revolutions, and defines the nature of the conceptual divide between the stages separated by revolutions.

In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Kuhn suggested that the proponents of rival paradigms practiced their trades in different worlds, by formulating different problems, by adopting different standards for problem solutions, and by employing different meanings for concepts. Consequently, scientists experienced difficulties in evaluating rival paradigms, because there were few shared standards and shared concepts among them. Kuhn used gestalt shifts as an analogy to illustrate incommensurability: scientists see things in an entirely different way after a revolution, as if wearing glasses with inverting lenses.

From the metaphorical description of paradigm changes as gestalt shifts, many readers of Kuhn concluded that he believed that paradigms were not comparable, and they consequently charged Kuhn with relativism. However, Kuhn has repeatedly claimed that these charges represent misunderstandings, that incommensurability allows rational comparisons of successive theories or paradigms and that it does not imply relativism.

To show the possibility of rational comparison, Kuhn made several significant revisions in his later explications of incommensurability. His first revision was to drop the gestalt analogy, abandoning the perceptual interpretation as well as the implication that revolutionary changes are instantaneous. To clarify the meaning of incommensurability, he developed a metaphor based on language: during scientific revolutions, scientists experience translation difficulties when they discuss theories, concepts, or terms from a different paradigm, as if they were dealing with a foreign language. Incommensurability thus is confined to changes in the meaning of concepts, and becomes a sort of untranslatability.

The prototype account can provide a dynamic account of concept formation. According to Barsalou, for example, prototypes are constructed in the working memory of our cognitive system, but the information contained in prototypes comes from a knowledge base in long-term memory. The knowledge base for a concept may contain a tremendous amount of information, but, very importantly, only a small fraction of the information in the knowledge ...