THOMAS KUHN'S PHILOSOPHICAL TURN CONCERNING THE INCOMMENSURABILITY OF SCIENTIFIC THEORIES

Are the discoveries of scientific theories continuous or do they arrive as incomparable and untranslatable constructs? Thomas Kuhn dealt with this question throughout his research. In his conception of the history of science he made a turn going from historical sociology towards linguistic sociology and hermeneutics. In The Road since Structure (2000) the author claims that the historical examination of science should be done from the philosophy of language. Scientific theories are linguistic constructs determined by sociocultural settings. Icomplement these ideas with Hans-Georg Gadamer's notion of 'fusion of horizons', giving thus credit to Kuhn's redundancy theory of truth. In this sense the paper ends by asserting that Kuhn proposal is pragmatic; the idea of truth by redundancy would be the theory which provides a better level of intelligibility: redundancy makes the choice possible.