In 1962 in independent, influential publications, Thomas S. Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend suggested the provocative idea that some scientific theories (concepts, paradigms, worldviews) separated by a scientific revolution are incommensurable. They have “no common measure.” The idea of incommensurability became central to both Kuhn’s historical philosophy and Feyerabend’s philosophical pluralism. In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), Kuhn 1996, cited in Thomas S. Kuhn on Incommensurability dramatically claims that the history of science reveals proponents of competing paradigms failing to make complete contact with each other’s views, so that they are always talking at least slightly at cross-purposes. Kuhn calls the collective causes of such miscommunication the incommensurability between pre- and postrevolutionary scientific traditions, claiming that the Newtonian paradigm is incommensurable with its Cartesian and Aristotelian predecessors in physics, just as Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier’s paradigm is incommensurable with that of Joseph Priestley’s in chemistry. These competing paradigms lack a common measure, because they use different concepts and methods to address different problems, limiting communication across the revolutionary divide. Incommensurability is also central to the aims and methods of Kuhn’s hermeneutic “new historiography of science,” which attempts to transform our image of science. Instead of the traditional image of continuous progress toward truth, Kuhn argues that scientific development is an evolutionary process away from anomalies. Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is unprecedentedly popular across the human and social sciences, widely touted as among the most influential academic books of the 20th century. Feyerabend first used the term “incommensurable” in 1962 to characterize the relationship between the concepts of universal scientific theories interpreted realistically, claiming that they have no common measure. The idea of incommensurability remained central to his pluralistic approach to philosophy from his early work to his infamous Against Method (1975; Feyerabend 2010, cited in Paul Feyerabend on Incommensurability) through to his late, postmodern phase. For example, two main themes of The Tyranny of Science (Feyerabend 2011, cited in Feyerabend, Reality, and Incommensurability) are the disunity of science and the abundance of nature, which are lessons he learned directly through his experience with incommensurability. With incommensurability, Kuhn and Feyerabend appeared to be challenging the idea that science is rational, and they were called the “worst enemies of science” in the journal Nature. By now incommensurability has become a well-worn catchphrase of 20th-century philosophy, used across a range of interrelated disciplines to mean many different things in any number of controversial discussions.

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This paper investigates the historical origins of the notion of incommensurability in contemporary philosophy of science. The aim is not to establish claims of priority, but to enhance our understanding of the notion by illuminating the various issues that contributed to its development. Kuhn developed his notion of incommensurability primarily under the influence of Fleck, Polanyi, and Kö hler. Feyerabend, who had developed his notion more than a decade earlier, drew directly from Duhem, who had developed a notion of incommensurability in 1906. The idea is that in the course of scientific advance, when fundamental theories change, meanings change, which can result in a new conception of the nature of reality. Feyerabend repeatedly used this notion of incommensurability to attack various forms of conceptual conservativism. These include the logical positivistsÕ foundational use of protocol statements, HeisenbergÕs methodological principle that established results must be presupposed by all further research, attempts to separate philosophical accounts of ontology from physics, BohrÕs principle of complementarity, and logical empiricist accounts of reduction and explanation. Focusing on the function of the notion of incommensurability common to FeyerabendÕs various critiques explicates FeyerabendÕs early philosophy as a series of challenges to forms of conceptual conservativism.

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