Incommensurability from a modelling perspective

Ronald N. Giere

pp. 265-269

in: Lena Soler, Howard Sankey, Paul Hoyningen-Huene (eds), Rethinking scientific change and theory comparison, Berlin, Springer, 2008

Abstract

The first thing to realize about Teller's paper is that the title is somewhat ironic. He in fact argues that, given a proper understanding of scientific practice, incommensurability, understood as 'semantic incommensurability", is no problem. But there is another notion of incommensurability, which Teller and some others call "value incommensurabity". In this sense, he argues, incommensurability is ubiquitous, but also not a problem. Thus, incommensurability is not a problem for a sound understanding of scientific practice.