ERNST MAYR'S CRITIQUE OF THOMAS KUHN

In the early 1960s, American philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn contributed to a "crisis of rationality" with his hypothesis that sci-ence develops by means of paradigm shifts. He challenged the positivist concept of cumulative and continuous scientific progress. According to Kuhn, the relation between two succeed-ing scientific traditions 'separated by a scientific revolution' is characterized by conceptual incommensurability that constrains the interpretation of science as a cumulative, steadily progressing enterprise. Thomas Kuhn's philosophy was heavily criticized by German-American biologist Ernst Mayr as unapplicable to the his-tory of biology. Mayr, one of the most outstanding evolutionary biologists of the 20th century and a "co-architect" of the so-called Modern Synthesis (contemporary Darwinism), published extensively on the history and philosophy of biology as he thought that theoretical biology cannot progress without proper philosophy of science. Being convinced of the progressive devel-opment of Darwinism, Mayr pointed out that Kuhn's concept of scientific revolutions does not reflect conceptual changes in evo-lutionary biology. Here we summarize Mayr's critiques of Kuhn and, based on our own research, take Mayr's side in the contro-versy between two great thinkers.